Monthly Archive for August, 2007

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K2 Sidebar modules vs. widgets

Published on August 13, 2007 in Wordpress. Closed

I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress recently, and in the process my K2 Sidebar modules were deleted because now WordPress has ‘widgets’ built in. Having used both systems for a while, I can only conclude: it’s a big step backward.

K2 Sidebar modules

k2-sidebar

The K2 theme comes with this plugin installed and it is the perfect sidebar framework:

  • it has an HTML, navigation, RSS, calendar … block and if you really need to do something very specific, there’s always the PHP block.
  • per block you can decide on which type of pages it should be displayed. E.g. you can show the navigation only in the static pages, and your recent comments only in the blog section. You can even exclude the showing on individual pages (e.g.: if on one page you need an IFRAME of 800 pixels wide, you can disable all sidebar modules.)
  • the blocks show the name that you gave them: you don’t have blocks named ‘Text 1′, ‘Text 2′ but e.g. ‘About’ and ‘Adsense’. This is much clearer if you want to change the order afterwards.

Just compare this: the RSS block for K2 and Widgets:
k2-sidebar-feed wp_widgets_rss

Which is why I dove into the WordPress forums to find a way to disable those simplistic widgets and get my original sidebar back. Here is the trick: the disable-wordpress-widgets plugin (also on code.google.com - via wordpress.org) disables the Widgets. I then installed the lastest stable version of K2 (0.9.6) over my WordPress 2.2.1 and not only are the sidebar modules active again, the sidebar was recovered as it was (from the database, probably). Awesome! Throw out those widgets!

David Boschmans

Published on August 8, 2007 in Belgium. Closed

Microsoft David2

David Boschmans was a kind, thoughtful and much appreciated man. He has left us way too early. My condoleances to his family, friends and colleagues.

also: Ine, Pietel

my PersonalDNA

Published on August 7, 2007 in Society. Closed


If you want to hear a lot of compliments about yourself that sound more-or-less correct, take the PersonalDNA test.

  • You’re in touch with what is going on around you and adept at remaining down-to-earth and logical.
  • Although you’re detail-oriented, this doesn’t mean that you lose the big picture.
  • You tend to find beauty in form and efficiency, as opposed to finding it in broad-based, abstract concepts.
  • Never one to pass on an adventure, you’re consistently seeking and finding new things, even in your immediate surroundings.
  • Because of this eagerness to pursue new experiences, you’ve learned a lot; your attention to detail means that you gain a great deal from your adventures.
  • The intellectual curiosity that drives you leads you to seek out causes of and reasons behind things.
  • …
  • You don’t mind being in social situations, as you feel comfortable enough with people to be yourself.
  • Your caring nature goes beyond a basic concern: you take the time to understand the nuances of people’s situations before passing any sort of judgment.
  • You’re a good listener, and even better at offering advice.
  • You’re concerned with others at both an individual and societal level—you sympathize with the plights of troubled groups, and you can care about people you’ve never met.

via bnox

Point and shoot badly

Published on August 6, 2007 in music and photography. 4 Comments

Luciano Supervieille I went to the concert of Bajofondo Tango Club in Brugge last Friday. Of course I took my Canon 350D along and shot a lot of pictures. I never use a flash for concert pictures, certainly not since I started using a 50mm f/1.8 and I can grab quite a lot of light with it. I usually use ‘Aperture priority’ mode (with aperture on 1.8, obviously) and use the automatic focus, because I’m not good enough at doing that manually. You sometimes have to wait for the right podium lights to go on, include some light spots in the frame so that your camera uses a shorter shutter but above all, you have to be lucky.

The pictures that came out rather well are in my Flickr Bajofondo Tango Club album.

I did have some fun with a guy in front of me with a ‘point-and-shoot’ camera, it might have been a Canon Ixus or something. He added a twist to the common ‘people-using-a-camera-flash-from-a-distance’ error. He would see a beautiful image in his viewer, push the button and a totally awful grayish picture would show up as a result. For his sake and that of other P&S’ers, here’s two rules for using it in a concert where you’re in the audience.

Rule #1: do not use your camera flash

You have a simple small flash in your camera that might reach as far as 5m maybe, but it is of no use for a podium 20m away. Your camera will think that the subject of your photo will receive a bunch of light from it and choose a faster shutter. The light of your flash will never reach those musicians, but chances are some will fall on members of the audience that are standing nearby, so the only thing that will light up is some bald heads, a fake blonde and a lot of dandruff.

Switch the flash to ‘off’ or use the ‘landscape’ setting! If your camera permits it, set the ISO-setting to as high as 800ISO (if you own a 1000€-plus camera, 1600ISO is safe too, but you shouldn’t be reading this then). This will make the image grainier, but will make the shutter time shorter. If the scene is still too dark and your camera uses shutter times of more than 1/20 sec, try to include more light in the composition. Don’t zoom in too much, it will only make things worse. You can always crop the picture when you’re home.

Remember: when you’re using a small flash at a concert, or even worse, a mobile phone with the built-in flash from 30m away, you look like an utter amateur.

Rule #2: do not hold your finger in front of the flash

This one cracked me up: the guy in front of me held his left index finger right in front of his flash. So most of his pictures were extremely dark, with the odd one that included a completely white fragment of his finger. The only times that this wasn’t the case, was when he took pictures in portrait, turning his camera 90 degrees to the left, which brought his flash even lower and added quite some very bright shoulders to the composition.

So, if your flash photos are way too dark, and your finger feels very warm whenever you take a picture, check where the flash sits on your compact camera and make sure you put no bodily parts in front of it.

Bajofondo Tango Club