Welcome to Sorcerer's Isle, a weblog covering a multitude of topics, ranging from programming to 3D graphics; photography to gadgets; tutorials to tinkering.
Within Sorcerer's Isle are three sub-blogs, which each focus on different aspects:
At Sorcerer's Tower you'll find programming and web dev; Midnight Isle covers photography and digital art; and with 100% Geek you'll find gadgets, gaming, technology, and more.
Articles may appear on just one of the weblogs, or across multiple, but every article posted will always appear on this one.
The team behind the StackOverflow Q&A programming site have created a place for people to propose new Q&A sites to be created - once enough people have voted in favour of a proposal, the site gets created.
Although it has plenty of flaws (which I'm happy to point out), the Stack Exchange platform is still a good way of getting quick and comprehensive answers to questions, and it's much better than many of the forums out there.
So, there are two of these proposals which I am following, and if you are into either photography or 3d graphics you should definitely consider checking out these links, and following the proposals too:
These sites will only be created when enough people have followed/committed to them, so please spread these links to anyone else who might be interested.
It's been far too long since I last posted anything, so I'll kick-off what I hope will be the start of more frequent posting with a couple of photos taken down on the UK's south east coast last month, immediately after some incredibly stormy weather.
The winds were still very strong and the evening sky nice and atmospheric, allowing me to create these two images:
The exhibition ended last night, and it was a good show this year, with a lot of excellent photos on display.
I did reasonably well - whilst I didn't win any of the trophies, two of my images received certificates of merit, plus I received a panel certificate for my "Elemental Views" panel.
This was a set of extra-wide landscapes with ratios between 4:1 and 8:1 - showing that it is not necessary to stick to the 4:3 or 3:2 standard that comes out of the camera, and photographers should instead consider what shape suits the image best.
Both my print panel and digital set of images are now available to view online:
Please feel free to leave any comments you might have.
This coming Monday 9th March, I will be exhibiting a panel of photographs at my Camera Club's annual exhibition, Photo 2009, to be held at the Fairfield Hall in Croydon.
In total there will be more than 150 mounted prints, plus over a hundred slides and digital projected images. These latter two will be displayed when the Exhibition is officially opened by Damian Demolder (Editor of Amateur Photographer), at 20:00 on Monday the 9th.
The prints will be available to look at all week long, at any time that Fairfield Hall is open - starting on the morning of Monday 9th and running until the evening of Saturday 14th.
The exhibition and opening event are both free to attend, and with Croydon Camera Club regarded as one of the best clubs in the region, there are sure to be some excellent pictures on display.
Anyone remotely interested is strongly encouraged to visit.
A taster of just two of my fifteen images is available if you view the full version of this blog entry...
There's been a little bit of snow in England for the past few days, and whilst I haven't had a chance properly go out and take photos, I have grabbed a few random shots.
(each image links to a larger version)
For the next week, I'll be staying in York, wandering around and taking photographs of whatever I find up here.
Each evening I intend to update this post with what happened that day, and show a quick selection of the photos I've taken.
Updated: 9th November
I was asked how to crop an image with IrfanView, so I created this basic tutorial, and decided I might as well post it on my weblog.
Please feel free to let me know what you think of it.
A few times recently I've seen pictures that are nice, but that could be made even nicer with just a few simple tweaks, and I really wanted to point out what could be done but didn't want to appear rude or unappreciative of the photos.
So it got me thinking, maybe I could do a series of tutorials on quick and easy ways to improve images. People would submit the photos that they would want to see worked on, and I would demonstrate a few simple steps that can be done to make a better picture.
And I've decided that I'll go ahead and do it. :)
Tonight my camera club had it's annual themed competition, and this year the theme was Water. Usually competitions are split into Standard and Advanced levels, however for this competition everyone competed together. Which is why I am delighted to have come in third place, with 33 out of 36 points for my three images — but better still: there was only half a point seperating the top three places, and the people who came first & second are the top two photographers in the club!
You can view the three images I entered at photos.bpsite.net/water.
From the 26th May to 2nd June I'll be in Edinburgh, exploring the city and surrounding areas, and taking plenty of photographs. At the end of the week I'll be attending Scotch on the Rocks, an annual ColdFusion developer conference.
Each day I'll be updating this entry with what I've been doing, as well as including some of the photos I've taken.
Update, Sunday 10th June: Photos Available
I've put a selection of photos into an online gallery, available at photos.bpsite.net/edinburgh