Another iPad app which went free for one day is CloudArt which produces a word cloud. It can be used to scour a web site as it did on my blog to produce this:
It didn't work on my YouTube pages as it picked up a whole raft of words which had nothing to do with my videos. The app has the facility to type in words so I typed in most of the titles for my videos. Haven't tried it yet but am pretty sure copy and paste could be used to move word lists or chunks of text between apps which support the copy facility.
The ap has a few choices for the layout, lots of choices for fonts and several fixed colour schemes along with one which can be personalised. Words can be deleted from the produced cloud or their size adjusted. I left the sizes as produced by the program.
How do I know when various apps are free? I use RSS feeds from App Saga and iPad Insight. Also I use the appshopper.com site. There searches can be made, interesting apps marked so that an email is sent to me when their price changes.
Saturday 30 November 2013
Friday 29 November 2013
Thursday 28 November 2013
Wednesday 27 November 2013
Autumn Berries, Winter Food
Over the past couple of weeks I spotted many hedge and garden plants laden down with ripe berries which will be very welcome as food for birds during the cold Winter months:
Tuesday 26 November 2013
Monday 25 November 2013
Macro on Monday - Guess What
Only one contributor solved the mystery photo perfectly correctly so Wilma received the virtual gold star for identifying it as a fossil fish. Well done to Adrian, TexWisGirl and Sue Garrett who recognised it as a fish.
On to what will probably be the last Guess What photo until the new Year as it is getting harder to find suitable things to photograph at the moment. This one was taken today.
Guess What:
Clue: Nuts
No prizes. Just for fun.
The correct answer, along with any guesses left in the comments, will be revealed next Monday.
On to what will probably be the last Guess What photo until the new Year as it is getting harder to find suitable things to photograph at the moment. This one was taken today.
Guess What:
Clue: Nuts
No prizes. Just for fun.
The correct answer, along with any guesses left in the comments, will be revealed next Monday.
Sunday 24 November 2013
Saturday 23 November 2013
Of Sparrows and Coconuts
Well, only one coconut and then only the shell. This one started life as a suet filled feeder but once it was empty the position of the cut-out made it ideal as a seed feeder. It is very popular with many of the smaller birds. Yesterday it was the turn of the House Sparrows to make full use of it:
What's on the menu today?
I'll have a sunflower heart please:
and I'll have the suet treat:
Room for two:
Video, slowed down to half speed:
What's on the menu today?
I'll have a sunflower heart please:
and I'll have the suet treat:
Room for two:
Video, slowed down to half speed:
Friday 22 November 2013
Friday at the Flicks - November Admiral
Last Tuesday when the sky was clear and the Sun shining brightly I was almost caught unawares when a Red Admiral flew in and settled on an old planter near the bottom of the garden. Considering that night temperature had been below 2C and even in the Sun it was only 6C with a very cold breeze the last thing I expected to see was a butterfly.
Even with a 400mm zoom lens this is all I could see with the 70D:
A small crop from the above photo:
It stayed long enough to get a bit of video, same 400mm zoom with 3x digital zoom in the camera:
Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.
You never know what will turn up.
Even with a 400mm zoom lens this is all I could see with the 70D:
A small crop from the above photo:
It stayed long enough to get a bit of video, same 400mm zoom with 3x digital zoom in the camera:
Have a great weekend observing the wildlife around you.
You never know what will turn up.
Thursday 21 November 2013
Clouds
Wednesday 20 November 2013
Which Seed Shall I Eat Next?
Plenty of small bird activity around the Birdy Bistro yesterday when temperature reached a maximum of 6C with an over night wind chill of -3C. Cold breeze but beautiful clear Sunny sky.
House Sparrow
Coal Tit
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Robin
Chaffinch
All photos taken with the Canon 40D with 100-400mm zoom lens and cropped.
House Sparrow
Coal Tit
Blue Tit
Great Tit
Robin
Chaffinch
All photos taken with the Canon 40D with 100-400mm zoom lens and cropped.
Tuesday 19 November 2013
Orchid
Monday 18 November 2013
Macro on Monday - Guess What
It was a bit difficult to guess exactly what last week's mystery photo was though the clue 'bottoms up' was meant to indicate it was a drink. Anyway the virtual star goes to Adrian (who was exactly correct in saying it was a glass of white wine), Sue Garrett, Glo and Ragged Robin who mention it was a glass of liquid. Good try from Texwisgirl as a rain gauge could look like that:
It took me ages to find the photos I intended to choose from for this week's mystery photo. Found them in the end so here is a crop from one.
Guess What:
Clue: Can't catch this with a bent pin and worm.
Just for fun. No prizes. The correct answer and any guesses left in the comments will be revealed next Monday.
New Toy:
Ever since I tried Magic Lantern on the Canon 50D to get video capability I've hankered after a Canon which has it built in, along with sound which the 50D doesn't have. Then I read reviews of the new 70D and they were very enthusiastic so I have been waiting to see some reasonable prices for a body only version.
I ordered one yesterday from Amazon and it duly arrived this morning. Spent a while browsing the 100+ pages of the user manual while I waited for the battery to charge. Of course by then it had turned dull and started to rain but I did manage a quick trial of the video. The first part of the video is with the 100-400mm zoom lens at 400mm. The rest is the same but with an extra 3x digital zoom added in the camera. It did a lot better than I expected with the digital zoom and the poor lighting conditions:
The original .mov files totalled 760MB in the camera so I processed the video as an mp4 level 5 which brought things down to a manageable 77MB for uploading. No other tweaking was done.
It took me ages to find the photos I intended to choose from for this week's mystery photo. Found them in the end so here is a crop from one.
Guess What:
Clue: Can't catch this with a bent pin and worm.
Just for fun. No prizes. The correct answer and any guesses left in the comments will be revealed next Monday.
New Toy:
Ever since I tried Magic Lantern on the Canon 50D to get video capability I've hankered after a Canon which has it built in, along with sound which the 50D doesn't have. Then I read reviews of the new 70D and they were very enthusiastic so I have been waiting to see some reasonable prices for a body only version.
I ordered one yesterday from Amazon and it duly arrived this morning. Spent a while browsing the 100+ pages of the user manual while I waited for the battery to charge. Of course by then it had turned dull and started to rain but I did manage a quick trial of the video. The first part of the video is with the 100-400mm zoom lens at 400mm. The rest is the same but with an extra 3x digital zoom added in the camera. It did a lot better than I expected with the digital zoom and the poor lighting conditions:
The original .mov files totalled 760MB in the camera so I processed the video as an mp4 level 5 which brought things down to a manageable 77MB for uploading. No other tweaking was done.
Saturday 16 November 2013
Forsythia Stem Gall
Growing in the corner of next doors front garden is an old forsythia bush. It had got to the stage where some of it was almost blocking the grass verge which is the nearest we have to a public footpath so I asked permission to chop it back somewhat.
While I was disposing of the branches I noticed many of the smaller twigs were covered with nodules. A search found that these are Forsythia Stem Galls, probably caused by the bacterium Pseudomonas savastanoi.
It seems a long while since I tried a serious macro using stacked photos so I got out the Heath Robinson effort I built a few years ago. This consists of a stripped down PC DVD player and an Arduino Nano. The Arduino drives the small stepper motor in the DVD player which moves the item being photographed a tiny distance further away from the camera at each pulse. At the same time it tells the camera to take a photo once any vibration has settled down.
The Canon 350D was fitted with a 70-200mm zoom lens with a Raynox DCR-250 macro lens added. As well as natural light an LED ring flash was used on continuous light. Each photo has a very small depth of field:
72 photos were taken, each with the gall a tiny fraction further away from the lens so each had a different part in focus. Finally I used CombineZP which stacks together the in focus bits from each photo. The idea is to end up with one photo with all the subject in focus:
This is the best result I have ever had using CombineZP so am well chuffed, worth waiting over 20 minutes of processing time to get the finished photo.
While I was disposing of the branches I noticed many of the smaller twigs were covered with nodules. A search found that these are Forsythia Stem Galls, probably caused by the bacterium Pseudomonas savastanoi.
It seems a long while since I tried a serious macro using stacked photos so I got out the Heath Robinson effort I built a few years ago. This consists of a stripped down PC DVD player and an Arduino Nano. The Arduino drives the small stepper motor in the DVD player which moves the item being photographed a tiny distance further away from the camera at each pulse. At the same time it tells the camera to take a photo once any vibration has settled down.
The Canon 350D was fitted with a 70-200mm zoom lens with a Raynox DCR-250 macro lens added. As well as natural light an LED ring flash was used on continuous light. Each photo has a very small depth of field:
72 photos were taken, each with the gall a tiny fraction further away from the lens so each had a different part in focus. Finally I used CombineZP which stacks together the in focus bits from each photo. The idea is to end up with one photo with all the subject in focus:
This is the best result I have ever had using CombineZP so am well chuffed, worth waiting over 20 minutes of processing time to get the finished photo.
Friday 15 November 2013
Fungi Friday
Wednesday 13 November 2013
Red Sky at Night ....
Tuesday 12 November 2013
On the Cut
On the Cut is a free app for videoing on the iPhone.
A quick test video:
It is so simple to use. Keep in contact with the screen to video, let go to pause, retouch to continue with the same video. Any time you are not touching the screen the video can be saved to the camera roll or deleted.
The video is a square format (480x480 pixels) mp4. Keep the camera upright, portrait orientation, or the video comes out sideways as I found out and had to get Youtube to rotate the above video.
A quick test video:
It is so simple to use. Keep in contact with the screen to video, let go to pause, retouch to continue with the same video. Any time you are not touching the screen the video can be saved to the camera roll or deleted.
The video is a square format (480x480 pixels) mp4. Keep the camera upright, portrait orientation, or the video comes out sideways as I found out and had to get Youtube to rotate the above video.
Monday 11 November 2013
Macro on Monday - Guess What
Another full house for last week's mystery photo. Congratulations and the virtual gold star to TexWisGirl, Adrian, Glo, Keith, Wilma and Sue Garrett for identifying the golf ball. The reference to eagle and albatross referred to terminology used for scoring in golf.
Bobby was very good at finding lost golf balls where people had been practicing on the cricket field.
Here we go then. A crop of an object for this week's mystery photo.
Guess What:
Clue: Bottoms up.
No prizes. Just for fun.
The answer, along with any guesses left in the comments, will be revealed next Monday.
Bobby was very good at finding lost golf balls where people had been practicing on the cricket field.
Here we go then. A crop of an object for this week's mystery photo.
Guess What:
Clue: Bottoms up.
No prizes. Just for fun.
The answer, along with any guesses left in the comments, will be revealed next Monday.
Sunday 10 November 2013
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