April 2011
4 posts
I’ve decided not to update this blog for a while, maybe forever. Maintaining several blogs (even with autopost) seems a little superfluous. I’m permanently at Posterous if you’re still interested:
http://blog.gregwallis.net/
Father & Son — candid monochrome portrait
From my Flickr stream (before I decide to delete it), this candid shot a father kissing his baby son is tender and poignant. Captured quickly with manual focusing and guestimated exposure, I’ve cropped it to to a square aspect (visually corrected to 11:10) and given it a delicate monochrome treatment. Another shot taken in Greenwich Park, London, this April on an amazingly sunny day, it...
Is Flickr now passé? And what about alternatives?
Once, a few years ago now, from the nascent photo sharing market was thrown Flickr. It was different, refreshing, and very much the modish choice for the IT in-crowd; simply, it was outstandingly cool. Then it grew and grew, many things changed and it finally came out of beta. Never intentioned for professional and business use — even, weirdly, with a Pro and paid-for account — features were...
"So Funny" — cinematic monochrome shot of closely...
I was in Greenwich Park, at the top by The Royal Observatory, when I saw this very happy couple, and I managed to catch them unawares with a longish lens that was wide open. Although the bokeh doesn’t show too well, because I’ve processed this image for maximum skin effect, it was decidedly striking in the original image. I might attempt to redo it, if I think I can still get the...
March 2011
2 posts
Creative image: So Angry
Caught with an old 135mm Pentax SMC lens with x2 teleconverter, this was hurriedly focused and exposed manually, and has been processed to give a very cinematic look and feel. Posted via email from Greg Wallis | Comment »
You sent me mail? The perils of Gmail's Labels and...
Imagine the scenario: a contact sends you mail, resends it and you still haven’t got it. You doubt them, they doubt you. For the umpteenth time you check Gmail’s Inbox, the Priority Inbox, and the Everything Else section. Nothing. So if it hasn’t gone into Spam, then your contact hasn’t sent it, right? Wrong. Here’s what can happen if you use Labels and Filters. ...
November 2010
1 post
Why no posts?
Haven’t posted in this personal blog for quite a while, I know. A million things going on, including domestic Armageddon and a restructuring of www.gregwallis.net . No excuses, I do realize this, so expect truly regular updates starting in the next day or two, as I feel a need to write, express, and opine. For those of you are interested, natch. x Posted via email from Greg...
October 2010
1 post
Google Sites add Nav Bar Dropdowns
Quietly and unannounced Google has added a much needed feature to its horizontal navbar element from within Google Sites: Horizontal navigation drop-down menus. Quite why these weren’t included in the initial roll-out of the horizontal menu earlier this year isn’t clear, but this new feature is much welcome and very needed by anyone that has more than a handful of pages to their site....
July 2010
5 posts
6 tags
Podcast — Why Use Posterous?
A new audio podcast, 3 1/2 minutes long, and a simple take on the many advantages of using Posterous to blog. (4192 KB) Listen on posterous Posted via email from Greg Wallis | Comment »
Not for those who are faint of heart
A deliberately processed close-up of Charlie the snake a couple of years ago. Like something out of a horror film, this image only partially shows the digusting way in which a snake eats its prey. It actually dislocates its jaw in order to make it wide enough to devour the baby mouse whole, at which point you witness a lump slowly move down the snake’s upper body. Why post this? No idea,...
8 tags
Dont Eat My Finger, People Are Looking
Most of my photographs I like to imagine as still frames from a movie; it’s one of the main reasons I favour a 21:9 aspect ratio (the nearest equivalent to Panavision’s 35mm anamorphic cinema ratio of 2.39:1). There’s something about a proper widescreen aspect that gives an illusion of there being more rather than the logical assumption that, being letter-boxed, there’s...
Why use Posterous over WordPress?
Right, this may sound a little strange, but why use WordPress for my main website and then use Posterous for the actual blog? Yes, it sounds odd, but there are good reasons. Whilst WordPress is turning into an all singing CMS solution that’s hugely configurable, it’s also not the most elegant solution for quickly putting audio, video, and documents online at the drop of a hat. Which...
Amazon S3 — oh the cost!
So I thought I’d have a play with the cloud and signed up for Amazon’s S3 service. Simple registration, nice and quick, too. Downloaded Cloudberry Explorer and logged in to the system. A few files were uploaded, a few downloaded and links tested left, right, and centre. All worked perfectly, I was most impressed. But how much was it really going to cost? I mean the amount that...
February 2010
1 post
Twitter is not a blog!
I’ve felt like writing this for a while, just to get it off my chest and also to maybe start a little discussion. You will have noticed — it’s impossible not to — that there are certain Twitter users who, unable to make a point succint and concise, on numerous occasions decide to write what is effectively a blog entry on Twitter using multiple tweets. The main point of using Twitter is...