Archive for September 19th, 2007
Upcoming Event – Carolina Motorsports Park in Kershaw, Sept 28
September 19th, 2007 | 
Author: I’ll be out at the Carolina Motorsports Park on Sept 28 to get some pictures of the cars on the track. If anyone is interested in getting pictures of their car let me know. I will be down there in the morning and throughout most of the day. I usually get about 1,000 pictures or so.
It’s a fun time just to watch the cars, so if you want to see some cars on the track this is a good event to watch.
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Microsoft gets their own blogging software
I haven’t been paying attention to this one too much, but I have to admit I am a little intrigued. Some of Microsoft’s latest Internet creations have been a little hit and miss and I’m not sure Microsoft really gets the whole blog thing to be honest. Sure, they have jumped on the bandwagon, but that’s because they want to own it, not necessarily understand it.
But anyway, their LiveWriter program seems to be getting some good reviews lately so I thought I would have a look. The screenshots look pretty impressive. It has a nice UI and claims to work with major blogging sites and apps such as Wordpress (which of course I use).
First off the install is very slow and very annoying. It had to upgrade me to the latest version of Instant Messenger. I have no idea why, but it did. And the install was terribly slow. Not the download, the install.
After that 20 minute process it installed LiveWriter. That went pretty quickly and then it installed some other adapter piece. I don’t really like the vagueness of what’s being installed or why it took so long.
With the program installed I tried to get it setup for Wordpress. It didn’t detect the server correctly and I had to put in the information manually. I had to use Zoundry to get that data to even finish the install. So far, not impressed.
After getting it installed and configured I got to the main UI, which does look pretty good. It looks like Word with some options to publish and insert across the top and tags and image links on the right side. It looks pretty good, but I have to say I like the layout of Zoundry better. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m so used to this or that I really do like it better. Zoundry has better dropdowns and the buttons are right across the top for inserting images and tags.
The formatting does seem better in LiveWriter with Word like features, spell check, font selection and the ability to download the “theme” so you can preview.
One thing I didn’t like at all that I think has to be changed before this hits the streets – there are no servers listed to Ping. No Technorati, no Google, no Ping-o-Matic, nothing. I know what the servers should be, but what the hell? Why is this blank? I mean egad there should at least be one server in there. You can put whatever list you want in there which is great for expansion, but to ship with nothing is just pure crap.
I haven’t used LiveWriter yet, but so far, I AM NOT IMPRESSED. Good thing it’s still in beta, there is no way this thing is ready for prime time. I hit three major flaws and I didn’t even write anything with it yet. Microsoft better get their act together if they want to be a player in the blogging world. Right now, they have no idea what they’re doing.
If you want to give LiveWriter a try on your own you can download it here:
http://get.live.com/betas/writer_betas
I have to say, I love Adobe Lightroom!
I have been working with my cityscapes and Lightroom is producing some great results. The pictures are of course dark because they were taken at night, but with Lightroom I can intensify the blacks to really make the colors stand out, I can add some fill light to brighten things up just a little, add some saturation to bring out the color of the sunset and all with just a couple of sliders. It really is an amazing app.
It really is so much easier to balance the colors and get the right look then switch over to Paint Shop Pro and crop and straighten from there. I would assume by now everyone has at least tried Lightroom, but if for some reason you haven’t I highly recommend it.
The main thing I need to do at this point is calibrate the monitor. When editing on my main machine I get the image to look a certain way. When I switch a different machine the picture is quite different. What looks dark with an amber glow, looks blue with a orange glow. The darkness of the images definitely differs. I need to get that all straightened out before I get too crazy with the editing.
