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- Journal
History & Technical Development of site (no longer updated):
- Nov
04, 2007
Happy
Thanksgiving! As you probably noticed, my host server has
been virtually trouble-free ... and therefore (knock on wood)
there hasn't been anything new to report! Since it seems that
most of the technical issues have been solved, this page will
probably not be updated anymore, and will just reflect the
technical history of my website. Thanks for
looking, and enjoy all the images!
- Jun
16, 2005
Happy
Father's Day! A lot of news since the
beginning of the year. A very nice Santa
(brother Bert) help me upgrade to a new Dell
"Core Duo" Inspiron E1705 laptop.
My panorama's have never looked better on its'
massive 17" high resolution screen!
Another very nice Santa (my brother-in-law
Gilbert), gave me his Epson 2200 7-color photo printer (that he
wasn't using any more). After spending a
week tweaking it, and "dialing-it-in",
I am now able to print my own amazing 13" x
19" prints.! Thank you Gilbert ...are
you sure you don't want it back? Next, I
was asked to become a beta tester for the Windows
version of a new image program "Light
Zone". While it can't quite do
everything like Adobe CS2 Photoshop ... it can
easily work on zones that CS2 can't even
touch. It is Killer! Also at the
beginning of this year, I decided to try entering
the Popular Photography Ford Explorer SUV
workshop competition. It was almost 4
months before they decided on the winner of the
$1,000 prize. I placed 5th, and you can
check out my entries in the album. In
April, I was able to experience being a
"Media Sports Photographer" when I was
granted field access to the Baltimore Raven's
stadium ... I attended the Women's ACC Lacrosse
Championship (GO UVA)! I witness some
awesome games, and the experience was absolutely
wonderful! During May, I attended another
fantastic Lepp workshop. I really think
that I have made much progress since his last
workshop. A few of my fellow classmates
thought I had the "best of show".
Besides being able to travel to exciting new
places, meeting new people, these workshops are
so educational and are really quite fun. I
am looking forward to my future workshop plans,
which include Yosemite, Big Sur, Arizona
Hummingbirds, multiple tours of various islands
in Hawaii, and a photo snowmobile tour of
Yellowstone this coming winter. As to my
host server site, my files have grown to over 1G
... my host (during the past 3 years) decided
that this was "storing data" ... so
after some scrambling, I am now back online with
a brand new company, and hopeful that my new
server and host will just keep on humming with my
modest web album pages.
- Nov
11, 2005
My host
server was off-line, and down the whole month ...
therefore it was impossible to access my
website. The recent repair now has the FTP
Server on a new IP address, and supposedly, my
data is now on a faster, upgraded, monster
3.06GHZ Quad server. However, it still does
not seem to be operating at 100% ... but at least
the site is now working! Luckily, other
than some old log information, I did not lose any
data during the server transition and
transfer. This is a very good lesson ...
remember to always back-up everything! I
also put together 1 terabyte of removable
hard-drive space ... just to do my back-ups.
On my latest Alaska cruise, I tried out a
new 2x converter, and new Speedlite 580EX
flashes. They worked extremely well.
I was all set, and ready to go on a major photo
safari down-under to Australia ... when they
postponed it at the last minute.
Darn! I may not get another chance for
quite a while. I am now looking forward to
a very nice Lepp Workshop course. Check out
my first serious attempt at using AdobeRGB color
space, RAW camera format, and direct printing
from CS2 to a high-end Epson 2400. The
huge 13" x 19" prints are amazing!
- Apr
04, 2005
I attended
another weekend workshop (Tucson), this time with
my new tripod and panorama head. The
contraption worked quite well, and the results
can be seen in the Tucson and the new Las Vegas
albums. I posted a review about it on Max
Lyon's site. All the bracketing and
blending creates a massive juggling of huge
images ... to help, I upgraded my RAM to the
maximum 2GB. I discovered that the 20D was
"back focusing", so it was sent to
Canon for calibration. So far, Canon has
been extremely helpful, and very nice to me ... I
am impressed! Finally, I am experimenting
with a new Russian blending software ... so far,
it looks very promising.
- Jan
01, 2005
Happy New
2005 Year! Just before Christmas, I
attended a weekend photography workshop in
Yosemite. This was an "eye
opener", and the results of some new skills
and knowledge can be viewed in the new Yosemite2
album. This year, a very nice Santa also
brought me even more nice equipment! I now
have a light-weight carbon-fiber, self-leveling,
Gitzo tripod. It's HOT! Until now, my
panoramas were stitched from hand-held images ...
no more! Nice Santa also brought me a RRS
"L" bracket and Pano Bracket.
These are SUPER HOT!! Say good-bye to all
the parallax errors ... it should certainly help
speed up the stitching process. Finally, a
new gizmo now "color-calibrates" my
monitors. All this should hopefully raise
the overall quality. Watch out ... I am
looking forward to planning many more photo
trips!
- Nov
27, 2004
Happy
Thanksgiving! It has been a wonderful (a
nice & quiet) 6 months since my last
entry. The new host (no more drama!) has
been extremely reliable, and is wonderful.
As reported, the new WD 200GB portable HD went
bad on me. I've since replaced the portable
backup drive with a Maxtor 250GB "One
Touch" ... but unfortunately none of my
original images were recoverable. No more
WD HD's for me! A very nice Santa gave me a
brand new pair of new tele-converters ... they
worked great on my 70-200 lens, and the results
can be seen in the Africa and Fort Collins
albums. I've also just picked up the new
20D, and it is fast! The results can be
seen in the Nephews2 album. As you can
probably tell, I am very impressed, and extremely
pleased with Canon. I will be attending
more classes, installing and trying even more of
the latest imaging software, as well as looking
forward to planning many more trips!
- May
28, 2004
For your use,
a monitor calibration is now located on the top
of this page. My WD 200GB Firewire portable
HD is starting to go wacky on me. I used it
mainly to archive all my (originals) JPG images,
so hopefully they are still recoverable ... it
would really be a "BAD DAY" if I lost
them! The new "long" f2.4 lens
made its maiden debut, and the results can been
seen on the (sports oriented) "Spikes"
and "Lacrosse Semi" albums. I am
SUPER pleased, the "IS" (Image
Stabilization) is amazing, and I cannot wait to
try more! The "Venetian" panorama
ceiling photo was posted on Max Lyon's discussion
board, and was very well received. Many,
many thanks! Something good must be
happening ... I am getting "hits" from
all over the world! Amazingly, there are
now only 12 measly MB of host space remaining
from my original 500MB! Too many
photos! Ha! Ha! I am now in the
process of obtaining another new host, and
transferring everything to a new server
(again!) This new server is using quad
processors, and GIGABIT connections! So
far, the setup does seem pretty peppy to me, and
it might even help out the dial-up modem users.
- Apr
1, 2004
Many thanks
to a generously nice Santa Claus, I now have two
new fantastic lenses: a wide angle Canon 28-70mm
f2.8L, and a long Canon 70-200 f2.8L. The
recent Ferrari Album contains many examples using
this new wide angle. I have also
experimented with them (including panoramas) on
my trips to Las Vegas, Alaska, and
Colorado. Currently, I am learning and
preparing the long lens for some upcoming
sporting events. The panoramas chew up so
much computer processor time, memory, and storage
(and thanks to another nice Santa Claus), that I
now have a fast new Dell 5150 laptop computer
running at close to 3 Ghz! It has taken me
some time to finally tame [Win XP] and [IE
6]. I had to do one reinstall of the
operating system, and one complete backup
restore, plus use numerous online help from
friends at
http://www.dslreports.com/forums/all.
Luckily, while all this was happening, my web
host server was content and happy the whole
while.
- Nov
1, 2003
It is **
Happy Days! ** to the just registered
"wongbrian.com" domain name! Say
"Good-Bye" to the old, and
long-hard-to-remember url name! The whole
site has been moved, and reworked to reflect this
latest change ... from now on, you can always
easily find me here. I have just completed
my latest Bryce Album, and in terms of file size,
it is a big one! I have noticed (using my
latest tools) that some of my panoramic
photographs look really nice in a larger
format. So starting with the Bryce Album,
and on selected photos, you may now have a choice
of 3 different display sizes (S-M-L ...caution
some of these files are massive!) I am
really SORRY for all those on dial-up modems ...
I am experimenting with some different jpeg
settings to see if I can improve things for
everyone. Also, I am still shopping for
hosts with faster servers, and faster internet
connections.
- Oct
29, 2003
It has been a
long, frustrating, and trying summer with my
marketsmash.com host. First they moved
servers on me, and promptly deleted all my
data! Later, they changed my name and
address! The final blow came when my disk
space was somehow reduced! I don't know how
much longer I can take of this carelessness ... I
am starting to start shop around for a new
host. For now, I am able to rebuild (glad I
have good "backups") at this temporary
site. The currently long, funky (and
hard-to-remember) url name should be fixed
shortly when I register for a new domain name
(just all to myself)! For some good news
... I've just acquired a fantastic new "pano
stitching" program that is able to create
much better, much higher resolution, and highly
detailed panoramic photographs. It also has
the ability to create those huge, spectacular
multi-row mosaics! Unfortunately, creating
these huge panoramics with my growing collection
of graphic tools is consuming huge amounts of
computer time ... so the current plan is to shop
around for a new super fast computer, with tons
of RAM (another new toy!) this Christmas.
Stay tuned!
- Jul
26th, 2003
The main
Album page has been "reworked"
again! I hope that you find it easier and
quicker to navigate. Beginning with the
latest (June-July '03) Yosemite and Hawaii
Albums, all photos are optimized to fit inside a
screen resolution of 1024 x 768 (sorry to those
at 800 x 600 or less). For most viewers,
they should see a beautiful full screen, with
less scrolling. The new panoramas are now
"clickable" and enlargeable (careful,
these files are huge)! As time permits, I
will slowly go backwards through each of the
prior albums (to resize and format the photos to
the new standard). There will soon be a
special album containing "cross
referenced" favorite photos of the whole
site.
- May
28th, 2003
Working hard
on some very large photo albums of Italy.
Almost all the photos were taken with the brand
new Canon 10D (which arrived the week of its'
maiden voyage). A new 1GB compact flash
card gave me well over 1000 (off the camera's
counter) "fine mode" shots. I
ended up with quite a few panoramic shots, and
they are eating up way too much
"tweaking" time (but well worth
it)! Additionally, the huge file sizes ran
(non-stop) 2 whole computer processing days (It
may be time for a newer faster computer)!
Next on my list is to purchase even more host
space.
- Mar
16th, 2003
4 more new
photo Albums completed, and lots of new
tweaks! The fast f2.4 Canon lens on the
D-30 camera performed flawlessly during the 3-day
snowmobile tour of Yellowstone. Also, I am
really glad that the handy Nikon 775 was along to
fill-in! The two cameras complement each
other well, and created a great combination of
photos. I am also experimenting with 3 new
software programs that I used to enhanced the new
photos ... the "stitched" panoramic
photos, the "noise reduced" photos, and
the "color" boosted photos all
demonstrated fantastic results.
- Jan
28th, 2003
Many thanks
to all the helpful and nice forum members at http://developers.evrsoft.com/forum/,
(especially DC, dbindle and Angel Zero).
With their very professional support, I was able
to solve an unusual CSS "mouse-hover"
problem that involved iFrames (the answer: do not
use "% height", but use "px
height"). With the problem now solved,
how do you like my new style (CSS!)
"Navigation Menu" buttons? Did
you ever notice the site's UCLA's color
scheme? With my new menu, I have
incorporated USC's colors ... Fight-On!!
Other news ... I now have a super
"fast" 2.4 lens for my Canon. I
cannot wait to try it during the upcoming
Yellowstone snowmobile tour. There should
be plenty more new photos! Finally, my host
is undergoing even more changes (I hope it means
a faster, and more stable server) ... fingers
crossed!
- Jan
4th, 2003
Happy 2003
New Year! How do you like the new
"icon look" on the "Photo
Albums" page? Because of the new year
change, I also updated every page with a new CGI
script code that I created (which will now change
all the yearly copyright notice,
automatically). I also have been busy
creating a new "store front"
site. We plan to try online sales of a
brand new product that I helped design.
This will be another exciting, challenging, and
new learning experience! Presently, I am
trying to get the kinks out of my shopping cart,
and the planned PayPal interface.
- Oct
31st, 2002
More
tinkering around, I couldn't resist. I
decided to permanently add the Calendar
script. However, I didn't like the way all
my scripts were displaying "on their own
page". I felt they needed to be better
integrated with the style of my site. I am
now using an "iFrame" for all the
scripts. Check it out, and see if you think
they "look & navigate"
better. I am now toying with adding all the
photo albums inside an iFrame. The big
problem in doing this, is that I will have to
trim & shrink down (yuck!) ALL my photos to
get them to fit inside (to help those with less
than 800 x 600 resolution).
- Oct
19th, 2002
I have just
successfully configured and loaded a nice new
Calendar program. Presently, I'm am not too
sure "IF, WHEN and HOW" I should be
using it, but it was sure a terrific experience
just learning how to configure it, and figuring
out how to make it run on my site. I have
the ability to "password" it, thereby
restricting it to just my trusted visitors.
It may then be used to serve them, so that they
can easily find out my schedule. There is
also an interesting "interactive" area
designed for the guest, that I have not
activated. But if you wish to take a peek
now, you can view it here.
- Oct
8th, 2002
Check out my
new message board, and see what you think!
I have decided that "Active Guest Book"
is my final choice.
Also, I now believe that most of this new site is
in a "functional" state (let me know if
you see any weird pages, or bad links). I
now have mucho amounts of storage space, a ton of
bandwidth, and I believe most of my permission
problems on this server are behind me.
This site began as a week long vacation project,
just to make a few simple photo web pages.
As I made a few more photo pages, I quickly ran
out of "free" posting space from my
ISP's. It quickly ended up as a 2 month
project which (along with server changes &
domain name switches) produced this whole new
site ... complete with new designs, message board
& multiple albums. I certainly learned
quite a few new things along the way ... it was a
great experience! This web site project
will now take a break. I probably will not
be adding much for awhile ... until my next major
trip or photo set ... but if you ever drop by to
take a peek, I would love to hear from ya!
- Oct
6th, 2002
I finally
finished, and added the huge Alyeska photo set.
I found a nice new guest book to replace my
remotely hosted one ... but I need the help of my
host to check on some possible cgi permission
problems. Hope to get it up and working
soon!
- Oct
4th, 2002
The joys of a
new hosting site! They have now decided to
change my domain name! Yikes!! So
instead of
"wongbrian.hawkinshosting.com", it is
now "wongbrian.marketsmash.com"
(something about SSI - "Server Side
Includes" and a dedicated IP address).
Well, that sure made a mess of all my
pages! (It ended up being another
"redo time" again) Luckily, not many
people have my address yet, so very little
problem with "site not found
frustrations". But even though it does
not show much, I spent HOURS redoing the
pages. I modified and improved the albums,
so navigating them should be much easier.
- Oct
1st, 2002
I had all
kinds of problems with a generic cgi "guest
book" program running on this server.
I finally decided to dump that generic program,
and started working on a remotely hosted
"guest book". The disadvantage
now is that I can't load and customize the
program (since it is remotely hosted on another
server). Also, I don't know if they will
either quit offering the service, start placing
ads on it, or start sending spam to everyone.
I plan to start working on the Alyeska photos
next. That will be a big job... probably
900 photos. I also had some
"bandwidth" problems with this new
site, and all that was caused just by me
uploading all these pages!
- Sep
27th, 2002
After 3 days
of trying to access my site, my host company
finally contacted me to fix the problem.
They have now moved my site to a new
server. They have also increased my space
... Yipee! So, I figure that this is a good
time for me to try and clean up all my
pages. Hopefully, I will be FTP-uploading
all my pages (again) to the new server
soon. I hope it all works, and hope the new
server is fast! I plan to work on my new
message board next, and I hope to get it running
this weekend.
- Sep
26th, 2002
Added, and
fixed more photo pages. I am also currently
struggling with creating a nice message or guest
board ... can't seem to get the icons to show
up. I won't have any boards online until I
know it is working properly.
Many of my album's thumbnails and photos were
redone ... I chopped down the file size of many
photos (to help speed up things). I am
toying with an idea of having a "low
resolution" version also, but it means
double the work! I may also try
reformatting the albums with less thumbnails per
page, and a smaller main photo (to help those on
modems and smaller screens). I am on a 1400
screen now, and it sure is awfully hard for me to
shrink down these nice looking (big) photos to
(tiny) 640 or less! To date, (4 photos
pages have been completed, the latest, is of my
new baby nephew (all taken with the new Canon
D-30). The web site is now up to around
45MB worth of data! However, I hope the
current host's problem is not serious, as there
has been no access for the last 3 days ... I also
need to buy more space soon.
- Sep
14th, 2002
Added more web pages, and photo albums to the
site. I'm already at around 30MB worth of
data, and will need to buy more space! I
plan to redo the Alyeska Alaska trip set into my
new album format. I can't wait to get rid
of the problematic Nikon photo site. Nikon
also gave me notice that they are cutting down
space for everyone, and that they will be
deleting my photos soon. I also plan to
make an album for Braden's one month old party
next we weekend. As for the site's menu
structure, I may create a personal message
page. I will need to study up on coding
some cgi magic. So far, I am pretty happy
with the site's speed.
- Sep
13th, 2002
Finally finished and debugged problems with new
album pages on new Hawkins Hosting service.
They are running Unix servers, and I have to
remember to be careful with my "upper"
and "lower" cases. I have three
albums for now, the Moab UT rafting trip, the B's
house, (taken on my August trip to Hawaii), and
the colorful Canon macro shots. They can
now all be found on the Photo Album page here.
- Aug
13th, 2002
It has been
some time since I've created my original AOL html
home web page (way, way back in May 1997 ... and
the original is still there). There were
only a handful of tools back then, and I ended up
(self) learning, & hand coding most of it on
my own. I'm trying to learn html again, and
currently searching for a new host to post my new
site. I am copying (stole) the basic
framework from Robin Keir, which I think has a
very clean and smart design. Hope you like
it, and hope you do not find too many broken
links!
- Jul
15th, 2002
I really filled-up quickly my allotted free
hosting space both at AOL and PacBell with all my
various photo sets. I am looking around
now, trying to find a new hosting service to
upload the growing photo album collections.
I initially signed up for a freebie host site,
but after some experimenting, I found it just too
slow for showing large photo jpg's. Also, I
found their interface to be very restricting, and
that they do not allow FTP uploading. I
have found and am now currently signed up with
"HawkinsHosting".
Until now, I have been uploading my photos on a
couple of commercial "photo" sites,
with varying degrees of success.
Ofoto
site: has photos
of the Moab UT rafting trip, the (July) Bloom's
house, and Mom's & Dad's Anniversary
party. As with all the other
"free" sites, they hit you with all
their ads and sale offers to buy something.
You will need me to set you a password to get
into their site.
Nikon
site: has photos
of the Alyeska snow trip, and a copy of Mom's
& Dad's Anniversary party. The Nikon
site is now limiting uploads, and now have a
policy to start deleting photos. People
were also having many problems with this site,
which made me switch over to the Ofoto
site. You will need me to set you a
password to get into their site.
Club
Photo site: had photos
of WDW (Walt Disney World) trips, Beanies, and
Bert & Yan's Wedding. This was a very
popular and everybody's favorite photo site ...
but they eventually ran into financial
difficulties. They have since deleted all
my photos!
The plan now is to create my own personal photo
album site, here at
"wongbrian.hawkinshosting.com".
It will be a lot more work, but I think the
results will be better.
- Jul
4th, 2002
Trying out my new Canon D-30 SLR digital
camera. Frustrating so far... it has taken
some fantastic shots, and it has taken some
really crummy shots. Lots of adjustments
and settings to experiment and try out. The
JPG's are very large, and clear. I bought a
macro ring light flash, and two lens for it so
far. I really like how long the batteries
last on the camera. I posted some samples
photos of some very colorful macro shots on the
album page here.I
- Feb
12th, 2002
Bought the tiny Nikon 775 digital camera for
Alyeska Alaska ski trip. The compact size
is perfect for trips, and the shots are
impressive for such a tiny camera. It is
much easier to travel and carry it around than my
outdated Sony Mavica digital. My one gripe
is that it takes a long time to boot up,
otherwise I really like how compact and
"point and shoot" easy it is to
use. The batteries lasted for a full days'
shooting in 17 degree weather. I shot over
900 photos during the trip and still have plenty
of room remaining on the 128 MB compact memory
card.
- Jan
2002 Start
Even though the journal's start date is January
2002, this site's original birthdate is really
much later (September 14, 2002).
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