« February 2010 | Main | April 2010 »
March 28, 2010
Little bit of history
A couple of months back we had a tentative knock on the door from a friendly guy who reckoned he might have lived in our house when he was growing up, but that he was so young at the time that he didn’t have a personal recollection of it. He came back a few weeks back with a couple of photos that his mother had given him of our house in 1943 when he was 3. Very interesting to see. A couple of obvious differences are the gravel path and lack of stucco cladding.
 |  |
Photos kind courtesy of Richard Goldsborough.
Posted by conor at 9:45 AM
The extra latitude with raw images
I’ve been playing about with the Canon Hackers Development Kit (CHDK) which is free, open-source firmware for a range of Canon Point & Shoot cameras. We’ve got a cheapy A430, which out of the box takes distinctly average images. Most Point & Shoot cameras will only record JPEG images. However, this is usually just a restriction imposed by the factory firmware installed on the camera. CHDK adds so many extra features to cameras that it supports, including support for recording the raw data from the camera’s image sensor (I shoot almost exclusively raw on my DSLR). JPEGs are 8-bit image files (i.e. 8 binary bits of information per pixel). My Canon DSLR has 12 bits of information per pixel (with 12 bits, each colour channel can be between 0 & 4096 instead of between 0 & 255 for JPEG), and the newer Canon DSLRs record 14 bits of information per pixel. CHDK “only” allows our cheapy A430 to record 10 bits of info when shooting raw, but the two images shown below are a fair example of how much information the camera can actually retrieve from the sensor when it’s not being crippled by the combination of the low-end factory-installed Canon firmware and the 8-bit JPEG file format. Note the difference in both the highlights (the sky) and the shadows (garden areas), and the more accurate white balance.
 |  |
| The image processed in-camera in JPEG | The raw version processed in Adobe Lightroom and converted to JPEG. |
Posted by conor at 9:32 AM
March 23, 2010
Ruairi's off to school
Ruairi's first day at school went swimmingly, especially with his big sister to keep an eye on him in the playground.
 |
 |
Photos expertly taken by Grandad.
Posted by conor at 12:50 PM
March 22, 2010
Kindy Wheelathon
Ruairi's last day at kindy more or less coincided with the kindy fund-raising “wheelathon”. Given the number of madly pedalling pre-schoolers, it's amazing there weren't any major pile-ups!
 |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
Posted by conor at 3:34 PM
March 20, 2010
Athletics meet
Evie's friend Paris won a colouring competition at school, winning a prize-giving from Beatrice Faumuina (Queen Bea the discus champion) and earning tickets to the International Athletics meeting at QE II Stadium for her family and classmates. Evie enjoyed meeting up with Paris & Madeline at the meet, and seemed interested in all the events, although the girls were obviously pleased that Beatrice chose to wear a pink tracksuit top.
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
Posted by conor at 3:48 PM
March 17, 2010
Wizards with chainsaws
Great progress being made down in Geraldine.
 |  |
Images courtesy of Graeme Mould, Natural Log Homes.
Posted by conor at 9:46 AM
March 8, 2010
Chinese Lantern Festival
We headed along to the Chinese Lantern Festival in Victoria Square, which seems to get bigger and bigger every year. Plenty of food stalls, plenty of people, and not surprisingly, plenty of lanterns. We didn’t stay until completely dark, with the kids getting a bit tired and cool as the temperature dropped, but very enjoyable; a hot-chocolate and a wander past the Chalice in Cathedral Square rounded things off nicely. The “Face Changer” was a particularly impressive performer on the stage in Victoria Square!
 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
Posted by conor at 11:59 AM
March 5, 2010
More Twilight racing
 |  |  |  |
Posted by conor at 12:48 PM
March 3, 2010
On the way to work…
 |  |  |
Posted by conor at 10:22 AM
March 1, 2010
Ellesmere Sunset
A quick trip round to Lake Ellesmere for a potential sunset and a bit of sketching. We left it a bit late, making it a bit rushed when we got there, but still pleasant, and still enough time for Sheila to get a quick sketch in by moonlight.
 |  |  |
 |  |  |  |
Posted by conor at 1:31 PM