Categories
Tips/Tutorials

Flickr’s Post to Blog feature


Knitting model

Testing Flickr’s ‘Blog this photo’ functionality – you just click on an image you want to blog about (yours or anyone else’s presumably), and if you’ve set up Flickr properly, you can compose a post on the Flickr site, and it will add in the photo and send it to your blog.

Doesn’t look like to can assign categories in the default setup, so you might be better off composing the post in your favourite editor (MarsEdit) for me, and pasting in the link to the Flickr photo that way.

But still a useful tool, for off the cuff posts. But you’d need to watch our for blogging on other people’s photos – technically you could argue that’s fair use, so it’s OK to put their photo on your blog. But you should definitely include links and copyright information, and ideally be blogging about the photographer and their work, not just using their photo to illustrate your post.

Categories
Reviews

Test of iPhone WordPress app

A short post while I watch Heroes. Posting this from the couch using my iPhone and the WordPress app.
The lack of real full-size keyboard (I’d pay a fair bit for a folding Bluetooth option) limits the sort of blog posts you can really do.
But for emergency edits or updates (of dodgy photos of your daughter), it’s pretty handy.


Categories
Reviews

Simple monitor calibration – Spyder2 Express reviewed

Calibrating your monitor is a bit like checking the tire pressure on your car – we all know we should do it, but most of us don’t unless our business depends on it.

To ward off dissatisfaction from prints, and make sure all my editing adjustments weren’t making things worse not better, I recently bought a Color Vision Spyder2 Express Colorimeter to calibrate my laptop screen, and my 2 LCD screens (one at home, one at work).

Like falling off a log

Setting it up and using the thing – which looks like a silver shrunken version of those boardroom table speakerphones – was very straightforward.

Categories
Tips/Tutorials

My camera smells

After 18 months of heavy-duty use, my camera body had developed an unlikely problem: it stank.

And my hands took on a weird slightly putrid smell after carrying it around for a while. I guess I should have realised that it might be a good idea to clean it once in a while, but now I couldn’t delay it any longer.

Eschewing a quick check of the manual to see what it recommended, I grabbed a baby wipe and went to work. A couple of minutes later (and no scary melting or marking), everything was much better.

The matte black surface now looks much better, and crucially the thing doesn’t smell any more. Next time I take it out I won’t have to wash my hands when I get home.

Score that one for the baby wipes – the gaffer tape of the cleaning world.