Photo Challenge – Day 4

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: June 4th, 2010 | 2 Comments

For today's photo, I have gone back to my set of photographs from my hike up Sliabh Gullion Mountain. While I was at the Summit of the mountain I thought it would be a good idea to take a few photographs and try to make a giant panoramic view of the surroundings of the mountain! Luckily I decided to bring my tripod with me for the camera, it is best to have a steady surface when taking photographs that you want to stitch together, you get a much better result. In total I took just 16 individual photographs and then I imported them all into Photoshop and used the automatic panoramic creator to make this panorama. When it was finished rendering I simply cropped the jagged edges from the sides of the photograph and ended up with the result below. This panoramic view is the full 360 view around the mountain from the peak!

There is a full size version of this panorama available if you want to see it, it takes a while to load as it is about 30mb in size! To see it click here.

Click on the photograph to see a larger version! How to create you panoramic photograph in Photoshop? Step 1: Click "File" in the menu bar and choose "Automate", then "Photomerge" Step 2: Choose the layout of the panorama you want to make then add the files the in box in the right. Step 3: Click ok and wait for the image to finish processing, this can take a while! Step 4: Crop any jagged images from the image to create a flawless looking panoramic photograph!

Eircom NGB or Imagine WiMax

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: April 28th, 2010 | 15 Comments

Currently my broadband provider is Eircom, I have tried them all from BT to Perlico and although Eircom's service is terribly slow, i found that the other Internet Service Providers (ISP) were just as bad, the main problem I have is to do with the download usage allowance, Perlico and BT both have set limits and enforce them, so as soon as I went over my limit I got an extremely high bill.

However, with Eircom even though they say they have a download limit, they do not enforce it, if I go over my limit nothing happens. This is why every time I switched to a different provider I ended up switching back to Eircom.

When I first heard about the new WiMax service that Imagine are rolling out across Ireland I decided that I would get it as soon as it becomes available in my area. My current broadband speed is 3mb (up to) and Imagine are offering 7mb (up to) at a cheaper price with unlimited usage allowance. It was the selling point here for me, I could get  a great boost in download speed for a cheaper price, why wouldn't I switch? Apparently the unlimited usage allowance of Imagine WiMax is not actually "Unlimited", I didn't expect it to be.

Imagine WiMax deem anything over 35gb a month to be excessive usage! That is a terrible cap to put on as excessive usage, that is just 5gb over my current cap with Eircom of 30gb which I do go over and do not get charged.

Since finding out about Imagine WiMax I found out that Eircom are also rolling out a new broadband service, they call it NGB (Next Generation Broadband). Eircom's NGB has a standard download speed of 8mb (up to) with unlimited usage allowance. All current 1mb, 3mb and 7mb users will be upgraded to the Eircom NGB for free! I looked up what Eircom actually deem to be fair usage and I have to agree it is a great cap, I definitely do not see myself going over it.

Eircom are setting their fair usage cap to 250gb a month :D . This download cap is only available on the highest end of the NGB packages, the high end NGB package costs about €10 more than my current broadband package. Also the maximum that Eircom will be charging for broadband is €50, so if you go really far over this cap, your bill will only run up to €50, no matter which NGB broadband package you are on :D .

I think for now, I will hold out and wait for the new Eircom service, the map on the Eircom NGB website says it should be available in my area between September and December of this year.

Week of holidays over now

Posted by: Sean | Posted on: September 21st, 2009 | 1 Comments

For the past week i have had no work :D . It was great, usually when i have time off work, it would go past really fast. But for some reason this past week that i was off went slow. It seems like such a long time since i was at work!

Although i have not made a lot of posts during this past week, i only actually made one, i still have been online doing a few things. I have being working on a few bits for other sites i own.

A site i am trying to get launched for next year about tv-shows, i have been working on how i am going to go about adding content as well as sorting out a decent design, which i think i have finally settled on.

Also this week i have been working on building a website for a local electrician, this is my second site that i have built for someone other than myself. Now i have clients! :D .

A few months ago i was going to get a move on with changing a music video / entertainment site that i was working on, The Entertainment Clam, I made a start then soon lost interest with it.

The site did receive a fair bit of traffic, but working with that site is fairly awkward. This week i found out that a new version of the site's software has been released, so i have now begun to get more interest in the site again and i am thinking of upgrading to the new software.

It would be great to find an open source alternative instead of paying for this software, i have found one or two of interest but i current hosting company does not support all the requirement, so i might look around and send off some e-mails to other hosting companies to see if they can or will host it :D, it is worth the try anyway.

I would like to get hosting here in Ireland, i have been looking at a few hosting providers and they are actually very competitive with American hosting company's, on such company is Blacknight.

I have also been working on a new layout for this blog, it seems like i am always changing it but i am not 100% happy with it just yet, the next version will be much much brighter, i have already settled on a layout, but there are a lot of tweaks to sort out with it.

Over the next few days i will have a few reviews of some products i bought recently including a netbook amongst other things.