RSS
 

Calibrate your monitor with PANTONE® huey™

20 Apr


My Pantone Huey monitor calibration system widget

I recently purchased this excellent monitor calibration tool called “huey” from PANTONE® the reason being I was constantly struggling with monitor colour and gamma etc. Having used the Windows based tool “Adobe Gamma” which works to some degree for general calibration but when it comes to editing photos and especially video there was a need to get something that would do the job better so that your colours can be accurate all the time.

Huey (a USB device) was a simple install from the disk and takes only 5 minutes to have it up and running. First it tests the ambient light in your room and adjusts, then it asks you to place the widget on your monitor (it has little suction pads underneath) and goes through a 2 minute process of colour testing, when all is done you replace the widget back in its holder and you can choose an option to have it constantly monitor the changing room light as day becomes night it will automatically adjust your setting seamlessly.

The results are great, my screen colours are now more true and crisp with no gamma haze or overtones there is a confidence knowing what I see is what it is. When it comes to printing this widget really works… no more reds printing as pink etc. what you see on screen will come out on print.

Would I recommend it? Yes for sure its reasonably cheap… I picked up mine on Ebay for about €55.00 including p+p. If you have been having trouble with colours and calibrating give this product a go, you wont be disappointed.

YouTube Preview Image Read the rest of this entry »

 

WordPress 2.5 Upgrade – Sweet!

05 Apr

wordpress logoIn the past few weeks I have upgraded my WordPress version from 2.3.1 to 2.3.3 and tonight to version 2.5 I must say everything went sweet!

I actually like the new interface it’s much more condensed and customizing the dashboard is simple. The option to upgrade newer plugin versions via FTP is really cool!

The image manager is excellent, I now no longer have to scroll down to the bottom of a post to insert images and the Gallery feature is a welcome. Toggle Full Screen mode is great and eliminates the double scroll bar issues when managing a long post. Just to note I have 7 various plugins on my blog and all work fine after re-activating them.

That’s all I’ve got time for now… must go, play and discover more sweet functions with this upgrade…. :)

Thanks to the team at WordPress for all your fine work!

Update Saturday 05 April

Read the rest of this entry »

 
No Comments

Posted in Personal

 

YoughalOnline.com Live Web Broadcast A Success!

22 Mar

I’ve been a little quiet here on my blog lately, much of the reason is my time is being eating up with the new venture www.YoughalOnline.com. I spoke about this in a previous post well I just want to update on the happenings with that website.

We broadcasted the St. Patrick’s Day Parade 2008 live on the homepage of the site and it was a huge success. We had viewers watching live from the U.S.A, Australia, New Zealand, U.K, Germany, France, Spain, Poland, India, Canada & Ireland. although the live stream was 43mins long I edited the stream down to 9:50secs for the main parts which you can view below.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade Youghal Webcast


Below are some photos taken by my brother Gerard McCarthy of the event on the day. By the way thats myself on the DV camera.

YoughalOnline.com Live Web Broadcast

YoughalOnline.com Live Web Broadcast

Read the rest of this entry »

 
 

Ticketmaster.ie – Where Are The Cheap Seats?

12 Mar

I’ve come to realise a strange pattern when booking ticket online using ticketmaster.ie First off when I am logged into my account with them and I’m searching for tickets why is it that I can never book the lower advertised (cheap seats) prices? its like those prices don’t exist for online users.

I say this as having bought quiet a lot of tickets this year alone from them. A recent example was buying 2 tickets for a friend for the “Prince” concert in Croke Park this summer. The morning of the sale I was logged in prior to the 8:00am ticket sale and as soon as online booking started I proceeded to book 2 tickets but no matter what way I tried to book I had no choice but pay the premium price of €126.50 + booking fee per ticket as apposed to the much cheaper €66.50 per ticket, I just don’t get it!

Same scenario booking tickets for “Wwe Raw – Wrestlemania Revenge Tour” Belfast, I’m taking my two sons to that event as they are completely into wrestling at the moment, well they’re aged 11 and 8 so it will be a mind blower for them, but tickets for that event were advertised at €20 and €55 per ticket and guess what Yep! I had no choice but pay the premium again online.

Anybody out there manage to book standard tickets with ticketmaster.ie online? I’d like to know?

 
 

YoughalOnline.com – A new community news website

01 Mar

Just want to announce a new website for Youghal town called www.youghalonline.com

YoughalOnline.com is the website for online community news, with fresh content, local news articles, and photos/video on a daily basis. Developed from an idea by Michael Hussey an excellent local photographer and journalist and myself coming from a web development background. The idea was to keep the content fresh and incorporate photos and video with the news articles, call it a news/photo/video blog. There are several other Youghal related websites but we felt neither updated their sites regularly and their content was stale.

Allowing people to comment and interact with news articles will be a welcome to some people as a way to air their views and also to get users opinions on local issues.

We are developing an online video section which will feature Youghal related videos from around the web coming from sites such as YouTube, Revver, MySpace, Bebo and many others. This video section will also feature live web cam events as they happen.

St. Patrick’s Day Parade, Youghal, 2008 – Live Web Broadcast

To launch the live video section of the site we are broadcasting this years St. Patricks Day parade live, this live cam event has been kindly sponsored by Youghal Bay Seafoods

Read the rest of this entry »

 
 

Google Maps – Animated Directions – Fun!

16 Feb

I have been playing around with Google Maps lately and have come across a few scripts I had from a few months back… This is a bit of fun!

Google Maps Animated Directions - Fun!

[Click Here to try out Google Maps animated directions]

What this does is you input a start location and an end destination in the input boxes, press the start button and watch the journey animated with a small van icon.

It will display your current speed, mph, road names & routes as it plods along call it “sat nav” on the cheap… :)

I have a preset journey leaving from Patrick’s St, Cork, Ireland going to The Square, Blarney, Cork, Ireland but you can change the start and finish locations to your own liking.

What’s also interesting about this map is it will take you across channels e.g. I put Rosslare as start and Swansea as finish and it took me across the proper channel route and then continued on the roads in the UK!

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Busy, Busy, Busy!

07 Feb

Just a quick post to say I’ve been “up the walls” with various projects over the past few weeks, a nice tutorial is on its way of my experiences with Google Maps. I’ve been implementing the maps on a property site I’m developing at the moment and had a bit of fun pushing the possibilities there. Also started teaching “Digital Photography” & “Webpage Design” at the local school, these are adult night classes and take some time to prepare but I really like the challenge and of course returning to the basics myself.

VectorMagic Link

I came across this really handy site to convert: PG, GIF, PNG, BMP, TIFF files to vector format, it’s a free online auto-tracer.

VectorMagic

Its dead handy if you have a low quailty image or small image of a logo that you need to vectorise for resizing etc. Out put files can be: EPS, SVG, PNG
Read the rest of this entry »

 
No Comments

Posted in Personal

 

YouTube have blocked my download tool!

24 Jan

It’s less than 48 hours since I posted my last article “Free YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool” and today I noticed that the download tool has stopped working! At first I thought  it was a code glitch, but no I checked everything out and it was clean? then I tried uploading the same scripts to a second server and yes it worked, I even tried the same scripts on a third server and it worked…. and one last shot was to try the scripts on a different domain but same server “Bump!” no joy…. :(

Could it be that YouTube/Google tracked the script page because of the Adsense banner? (maybe)…  and the fact that a heap of trackback links from crap blog scrapers featured the article….. What to do now… Should I remove the scripts and links to it…. I’m not sure?

 

Free YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool

23 Jan

Click here for the “YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool”

youtube-video-downloader-path-to-flv-finder-tool

Click here for the “YouTube Video Downloader & Path To FLV Finder Tool”

This is a follow up article on my previous post “How to get the direct url path to .flv video files on YouTube for Free” it’s a collection of php scripts mashed together from around the web. It will enable a user to fetch the actual .flv path url to a YouTube video.

If anyone is interested in the code leave a comment request and I will contact you.

Hope this helps you!

Read the rest of this entry »

 

Who stole the bridge?

18 Jan

This news makes me laugh …. how the hell did they do it?
The article came via Ananova image by current.com

Russian Bridge

Scrap metal thieves in Khabarovsk, Russia managed to steal a 200-tonne 38ft structured steel bridge without anyone noticing. The criminal scrap metal collectors most likely were interested in four steel pipes which served as the foundation for the bridge. They dismantled the bridge during the night of December 29 and vanished with its parts in an unknown direction.

It was part of the only road leading to a heating plant. Bosses at the company said the cost of replacing the bridge would be ten times the value of the scrap metal that had been stolen.

Local road service crews are currently reconstructing the bridge, they plan to replace the bridge with one made of concrete while police have launched a search for the criminals.

This incident became the third such case in 2007 – the two previous bridge thefts occurred in the Ryazan region and the Primorsky region.

 

My Homemade Video Camera Crane Jib – DIY

10 Jan

I was busy last weekend shooting a music video for hip-hop artist Sandyman B for a soon to be released track called “I’m In Love”. It is early days for the video and many editing hours to come but I shot some really nice footage which I will blog about over the next few weeks with a few example shots from behind the scenes.

I used my homemade camera crane to take some unusual video angle shots. This crane was built by my friend Frank McQuillan based on on some plans that Frank, Mark Waters and I had come up with in April 2007. It was built as a prototype with wood, roller blade cogs, an old tripod speaker stand and various other bits and pieces. The cost was about €50 for materials.

Example Video

Below is an example video shot with the homemade jib crane and already it’s been viewed 8,355 + times on YouTube.

YouTube Preview Image

 

Read the rest of this entry »

 

World’s Best Resignation Letter?

03 Jan

I’ve come across this letter on the internet and in emails many times over the years and it never fails to make me laugh. Its an oldie but a goodie and it comes via
You’ve Got Laughs! The Big Book of Internet Humor” by Al Lowe

Dear Mr. Baker,

As an employee of an institution of higher education, I have few very basic expectations. Chief among these is that my direct superiors have an intellect that ranges above the common ground squirrel. After your consistent and annoying harassment of my co-workers and me during our commission of duties, I can only surmise that you are one of the few true genetic wastes of our time.

Asking me, a network administrator, to explain every nuance of everything I do each time you happen to stroll into my office is not only a waste of time, but also a waste of precious oxygen. I was hired because I know how to network computer systems, and you were apparently hired to provide amusement to your employees, who watch you vainly attempt to understand the concept of “cut and paste” as it is explained to you for the hundredth time.

You will never understand computers. Something as incredibly simple as binary still gives you too many options. You will also never understand why people hate you, but I am going to try and explain it to you, even though I am sure this will be just as effective as telling you what an IP is. Your shiny new iMac has more personality than you ever will.

You wander around the building all day, shiftlessly seeking fault in others. You have a sharp dressed, useless look about you that may have worked for your interview, but now that you actually have responsibility, you pawn it off on overworked staff, hoping their talent will cover for your glaring ineptitude. In a world of managerial evolution, you are the blue-green algae that everyone else eats and laughs at. Managers like you are a sad proof of the Dilbert principle.

Seeing as this situation is unlikely to change without you getting a full frontal lobotomy reversal, I am forced to tender my resignation; however, I have a few parting thoughts:

Read the rest of this entry »