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» Monday Quickies

It’s a very relaxing Monday for me because I’m sitting here in the quietness and I’m just relaxing and enjoying the time. I thought however you guys should get a few quick news updates as always.

• If you are new to CSS coding you should check out this good tutorial on using float elements form the base up. It’s just All About Floats. It’s the base of website coding nowadays and you should really know it.
   
• Apple has gone ahead and released OS X 10.5.4 which fixes a few bugs and improves things overall. You can view all the updates in an Apple Helpfile. The update can be downloaded right from the Software Update.

The image above is a little test macro image I shot while walking around here on the island today. Have a great evening/night/day wherever you are and I’ll see you back tomorrow!

» I’m at the Koster Islands!

 

I’ve arrived at the Koster Islands where I’ll be spending the week. I’m also very happy to report that my mobile broadband (that’s brand new) works as I’d hoped, so I have internet access all the week which means I’ll be able to share photos with you all as they come, as well as some dose of news. The image below is what I see outside my window almost from my bed (at least from the little table in the mini-house) well, apart from the fact from that it is an HDR photo. Pretty beautiful isn’t it!

I’ll be scouting around the island from tomorrow and throughout the week and shoot a variety of subjects. From flora to landscapes to forests and to animals, here is everything. I’ll also make good use of my brand new macro lens.

» Saturday News

 

It was supposed to be early Saturday but things got interupted and it is not later instead, but here are still some news for you from today and yesterday. Have a great weekend!

» New Lens - Tamron 90mm f/2.8

 

Today is a new lens day here. As some of you know I’m off to a bit of a vacation this coming week up on the wonderful islands of Koster. It’s some very beautiful nature there and I’m going to be taking a lot of photos while there so I thought why not add another new lens to my arsenal right before this. I have long thought about a good and reasonably priced macro lens (hence the 105 VR too expensive) that would work really well for both Macro and Portraits. Now I felt though that it was a great time to pick this one up. I haven’t really done any testing because I got home late and all (writing this just before midnight now) so I’m looking forward to try it out and I’ll be writing a review during this week.

Sorry for the lack of industry news today but I’ll do a post tomorrow morning here!

» Calibrate your screen day!

Today my friends is an important day, or as I very recently realised, a very important day! Today is the calibrate your screen day. Wait you might say, I didn’t know this existed? Well it didn’t until I just invented it. Here’s the story.

I’ve never really been that big on screen calibration and mainly seen it as a thing that would just cost me money for not that visible results and so I never really tried it or anything, just dismissed because of the cost. Now however, yesterday, I got to try the calibration deal with a Spyder3 Elite that we have in the store where I work and man did it do a difference! I mean even at my laptop screen, yes, my glossy, low-qual MacBook screen it made a big difference. I’m now totally hooked up on this and going to order my own Spyder3 and make sure I calibrate my screen and colour manage all more properly than I’ve done before. It’s something I never really started to learn because I did dismiss it without seeing the difference!

As it should be, all because I am psyched up about it, today becomes the ”Calibrate your screen day” and be sure to see more things on screen calibration soon when I get up and running.

» No Blogging Wednesday

Got a lot to do today which means that there will be a no blogging Wednesday. Instead go and check out a guest-blogger post over at Scott Kelby’s blog by Matt Kloskowski that talks about a fun project that involved photoshop! Matt did a wonderful post there and it is worth your time!

Tomorrow is going to be an article Thursday with some coolies! The picture above also from my recent weekend trip! Cool things are happening, more on that tomorrow!

» Late Tuesday Things

It’s busy times right now preparing the shop windows and all for the summer and sales and I’m a bit of the in-house web designer and design/tech guy so I actually get to do a lot of it.

• Microsoft has released a critical update to Office for Mac 2008 bringing it up to 12.1.1. It should fix several things mainly stability and performance issues. The update is available through the Auto Updater which you can get to by going into either Office application and choose "Check for Updates".
   
• Here’s a little tip for you, something I always do. If you are trying to design something, start with a piece of paper and a pencil (having an eraser nearby would be pretty nifty as well). This way you can lay up a lot of things and write comments to yourself before working and finalising it on the computer. Also very easy to show to other people near you for quick-feedback.
   
• If you are looking for an advanced text editor also for the Mac that greatly supports coding, then you should look no further than Smultron. It’s a really good editor that supports all major code languages you want to code in mainly for the web but also for more trivial tasks like doing a to-do list. Check it out!
   
• I’m in the market for a new lens, mainly a macro lens (can’t be too expensive so the Nikon 105 VR is out unfortunately) and if any of you have any experience with one, post a comment and tell me because I’d love to hear it! Needs to be good for macro and portraits. I have a pretty good idea on what to check out but any input and hands-on experience wouldn’t hurt.

» Real Monday News

The weekend is over and everything is back to full swing. Below are the news:

• Are you a keynote user? If you are a mac user and not a keynote user you really should be! In any case, iPresentee has released a lot of free objects (100 of them in fact) for both Keynote, Pages and iWeb! They are really cool and yeah, they are indeed free. Visit the iPresentee site to download.
   
• A little sneak-peak at the future. I’m working on a DVD, unluckily for most of you guys, this first will be about Photoshop Elements and only available in Swedish here in Sweden in one place. I might make the DVD available for order online here (I probably will) but I talked to the boss at the camera store where I work and asked if I could provide a DVD that he can sell/pack with the Elements purchases and I got an OK, so I’m at least getting out there.
   
• I’ve been a NAPP member for a little longer than a year and I really like it and if you’ve been thinking about it, now it s great time to join. Why? Because it is summer and you most likely have a lot of time to learn. Now, NAPP isn’t just about tutorials but also about a great member forum and lots of discounts, reviews and more. Go and visit the NAPP Site.
   
• The top photo is another one from my trip this weekend! Enjoy and see you back tomorrow!

» Late Evening Update

 Alright so I took the train this morning down to the most beautiful little town and coastline that I know of here just north of the city Halmstad here in Sweden. It’s mostly a quick visit to my grandparents but obviously you can’t turn down an amazing shooting opportunity. This is the result of this evening’s shoot, well one of the results (I have a few more). Gonna share some more later one but for now, this’ll have to do. It’s so nice to get out there after working so long with little time for it!

I’ll see you all back tomorrow with a surprisingly bloggy Sunday!

» It’s the Friday Stuff

It’s once again this time of the week. It’s Friday and it’s a long weekend here. In the morning I’m going to be catching a train down south to join my mum at my grandparents house. I hope for some great shooting weather there and to be able to post some new shots. Meanwhile, here are some news from today!

• If you are a Lightroom user and move between a laptop and a desktop a lot and want to be able to in a good way move Lightroom stuff like that as well, you probably want to check out Matt Kloskowski’s post today over at his blog where he talked about that. Check it out here.
   
• I posted up a new review in the reviews section earlier today. If you like me are a Mac user and use the Twitter service, you might want to check out the review of the Twitterific application.
   
• I hope you are reading this amazing comic strip, but in the event that you aren’t, go and check out What the Duck. It’s a great comic strip available on the site right here. Should start up your weekend right.
   
• I’m working on some cool new website sections and updates both here and on XLD Studios and both sites will get a few new cool things added coming soon. A post is over there describing the summer changes on that side.