http://jaysenmarais.com/blog Making it happen, bit by bit Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:20:17 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It was all I could do to stay true to my anti-iPhone stance so long as my 3G demands remained unmet, so when apple finally relented and released the iPhone 3G I too was forced to concede (it would have been unreasonable of me not too!). Most curious onlookers are ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20080825/immersive-photographs-on-the-iphone-with-pangeavr/ Just a quick post (to offset my last ridiculously long post on stitching panoramas with Hugin). I've finally posted the photos from my recent trip to Salzburg & Munich. It took a few weeks (spare-time) to cull (from ~400 to 85), caption, tag, geocode, post-process and upload the images. I'm still ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20080407/photos-trip-to-salzburg-munich/ Most modern digital cameras (even phones) have a 'panorama photo' mode, allowing you to take multiple photos which are then magically combined into a single large photograph. Sounds great, but there's a problem. These composite images (whether produced in-camera or using 'automatic stitching' programs) look OK at first glance, but ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20080402/making-linear-panoramas-that-dont-suck/ Today's a big day at dpreview.com as it sees the launch of the first dpreview.com lens reviews. I'm excited as it also sees the launch of my latest and greatest project, the humbly-titled lens review widget (or see it embedded in a lens review). The lens review widget is a flash ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20080130/dpreview_lens_review_widget/ Until recently my digital photography 'workflow' (such as it was) has been comically under-thought: Take photo, download images (using canon software) to mac and wipe CF card. Import images into iPhoto 6 then: Battle against iPhoto's terrible data-entry interface (helped slightly by Ken Ferry's great Keyword assistant for iPhoto). Complain bitterly when I realized ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20080106/photography-08-ditching-iphoto/ Recently I bought a Garmin GPSMAP 60csx, a kick-ass GPS handset with all the bells and whistles. It arrived from amazon the other day (cheaper than buying in UK even after shipping and customs) and I immediately set about prepping it for my upcoming trip back to Australia. Supplementing the ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20071217/going-off-the-reservation-with-new-garmin-gps/ I've had a quiet blogging spell lately due to the general upheaval of changing jobs, countries and continents. I've said goodbye to the consulting world and taken a position working with the gang at dpreview.com as a full-time public-facing web-developer. It's a huge, popular and ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20071208/ive-joined-the-dpreviewcom-team/ Recently, I created an IM icon for a friend. It's a fairly straight-forward appropriation of the classic Che Guevara icon, which normally I'd avoid but the Simon's surname is pronounced 'Che', so my hands were tied. an IM icon created for a friend (whose name is a homonym for che's) In the ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20070730/pico-redux/ A project that I've been working on forever has, among other features, a 'search images by colour' feature. This is one that I'd been excited about for a long time and had tackled on several occasions but it had never quite come together. Until now. My previous attempts had all ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20070617/hue-city/ After several weeks' work, quintonmarais.com launched this evening. Hi-lights include .Net 1.1 to .Net 2.0 upgrade (long live the MasterPage) Amazon S3 for all image storage (dramatically reduced bandwidth and hosting costs) Google map-based location search. Creation of "Pusher", a fire-and-forget image watermarking, batch uploading and ... http://jaysenmarais.com/blog/20070613/quintonmaraiscom-launched-tonight/