David's Blog

Several recent experiences have caused me to have concerns about quality. Editing chapters for book to be published soon, smart clothes and wearable technology, a major difficulty has been image quality too much use of digital cameras without the users understanding that it is always best to use as higher quality as possible. This is inevitably against the background of manufacturers saying you can take 1,000s of pictures on a 1Mb card yet I would normally take about 39 on same sized card! The beauty of digital is that can use a card again and again so why take poor quality pictures? Leave your camera on high quality or better still RAW. It is always time consuming or occasionally impossible to reshoot so better to do it right first time, unfortunately this is something that atcaeologists seem unable to do if the recent database for bioarchaeology looking at bones is anything to go by. Even the simplest of proper photographic set-ups could have achieved good results instead of out of focus or images with knsufficient depth of field. Again another example of the need for photography to be a key skill addressed in science degrees.

This is a test blog using my iPod touch. This is using the iMT plugin. What does take time are my big fingers being accurate enough to type quickly with one finger two doesn't work for me. Typing is faster than me trying to use my mobile Pebl. The keyboard reacts well especially the change to caps after a fullstop. The trick of checking spelling is to tap at the right place in a word but it prefers the end of a word for corrections. If you use a hypenated word like multi-professional, it still makes you go to the end of the word. 

Dragons from the Catalonian street-arts company Sarruga invaded Derby streets on Saturday evening to celebrate the Westfield Shopping Centre opening. Thousands of people including many families turned out to see the parade of Dragons as they made their way down from 'The Spot', on London Road, down through the streets into the Market Square for a final fight between St George and the Dragon then a few fireworks.

More photographs from the Dragon parade are at http://www.cladonia.co.uk/derby

Looking at today's e-mail although the ALT-C 2007 conference is finished, well I am home as only a short hop to Derby, I thought this product release could not go unmentioned. The new range of iPods includes the iPod touch which is WiFi enabled and in view of the interesting points that Dylan Wiliam made during his keynote address (Link to page for link to talk not the 75Mb download!) the feasibility of multiple question answers onto web pages then aggregated during a class session become an immediate possibility.
Like the iPhone it looks to be based on the use of the Mac OSX operating system which will enable developers to create small apps for in class question feedback at the touch of an iPod. Is this the tool that will take the iPod a stage further?
As the owner of an iPod Photo I couldn't see a reason to upgrade to the iPod video the iPod touch is a different animal and if I can surf the web why not web based telephony and no need for the iPhone which would solve the European mess of which mobile phone company to collaborate with? I am sure there are even more possibilities. PS Thanks for a great conference it was my first but definitely won't be my last with best wishes to all especially other bloggers.

The blog feed from blogs is an interesting way of linking peoples thoughts and reflections. However wandering around it was interesting to see how glued or involved folks are when working with a computer the common phrase "Do you mind if I use my computer when you are at a table" which we can interpret as something along the lines of "I don't want to be rude but I am not going to talk to you but commune with my computer" or words to that effect. So I took a few photographs, no electronic flash, so as not to disturb of the intensity of involvement with screens and bloggers positions and postures, comfortable, laid back, standing, sitting, discussing even. OK not everyone is blogging b ut in terms of alliterative titles it sounds much better!

The slideshow below is the photographs together with music using Soundslides http://soundslides.com see earlier blog. For bigger version go to http://www.cladonia.co.uk/soundslides/bloggers

A good day of presentations and workshops and good food an essential conference criteria. After trying to focus from the number of threads you are sure you have missed a lot of good sessions but you have to go with what you have chosen. Highlights for me was the last session about Postgraduate Blogs which was a neat piece of reflective research from a reduction, in sauce sense, of examining themes and ideas from categories of blogs to what they can do to support and enable research collaboration. Cancel idea of using mobile phone for photography!

http://www.alt.ac.uk/altc2007/timetable/abstract.php?abstract_id=1150

Having recently had cataract operations on both eyes this has led a number of losses and gains. This is from the perspective of someone who has worn glasses since the age of 5 except for a 17 year period wearing soft contact lenses soon after they first cames out.

On the plus side I don't have to wear glasses anymore (Big cheer) except for reading, and yes I can see one of everything rather than multiple versions of text and objects (This made watching snooker especially odd!). The cost of glasses is less my normal glasses cost upwards of £300 plus reading glasses £250! Now two reading pairs with new frames £200 a massive difference.

On the negative side I have lost my close-up vision, for someone who was very shortsighted (-10 and -11 dioptres for those in the know e.g. free eye test territory!) this is useful without glasses is like using a hand lens threading needles was always a doddle. This is probably also where my interest in close-up photography came from as in many ways it is this ability to see what the naked eye can't normally see that has always fascinated me. Whether it is the structure of a moth's eye (see photograph to left) or poppy seeds (see earlier post) whenever you examine something that close there is always something new and unexpected to be found.

Oh by the way my next purchase is in optics is going to be a hand lens.

OK so I don't personally like peanut butter but cheese and marmalade wouldn't go down well as a name. Although I have Mediawiki on my website pbwiki for educational use is very easy to set up and use. We are currently using it as part of the Postgraduate Programme for Learning and Teaching at the University of Derby, more feedback on how it works in a later blog.

Check out the PBwiki tour!
Create your own wiki at http://www.pbwiki.com or
Link to
http://educators.pbwiki.com/PBwiki-educator-videos

Along with programmes like FotoMagico from Boinx Soundslides is a great little programme for creating audiovisual materials. For a simple AV presentation just click to upload a sequence of images (jpgs) then click to upload a sound track (mp3, aiff, wav) which could be music or description of images for a lecture and it is ready. The final presentation can be fine tuned very easily changing the synchronization of images with the presentation, skin for the presentation, titles and any other text.

The real advantage of this programme is that it is available for Mac and Windows and appeals very strongly to students. They can create AV presentations very quickly from their photographs and control how they run then show them online or in class sessions. For sessions where you want students to show there work whether images of illustrations or photographs it adds something more than images on their own.

The programme can be run free with soundslides logo dropping down in first frame and a link or buy for $39.99 only other need is Flash 7. Examples of presentations are available from the soundslides forum. It was designed for journalists to combine pictures with reports but works well for other markets.

The forum includes some interesting soundslide presentations:

• Dulcimer Festival
• Architectural photography project
• After the tsunami presentation

I thought it was about time I got back to writing and looking at scientific photography on my blog so I here is a recent photograph of poppy seeds. Yes well exciting! Actually poppy seeds I realized after taking photographs of bread with ultraviolet fluorescence looked interesting so I used photomacrography to get closer and the shapes on the surface are hexagonal.

Heaxgons are not uncommon in nature from the shells of some prehistoric creatures, to eyes of moths and other insects, shapes of honeycomb and wasps nests and inside our eyes with the corneal endothelium. More on hexagons to follow this piece.

For information on the mathematics of hexagons go to http://www.mathopenref.com/hexagon.html