optimiced | en

I often drop a look to the website of NASA for astronomical photography (APOD).

I remained speechless, when I saw today’s photo:

Follow the link and see the photo in larger size, and also read the explanation:

Volcano Tungurahua erupted spectacularly last year. Pictured above, molten rock so hot it glows visibly pours down the sides of the 5,000-meter high Tungurahua, while a cloud of dark ash is seen being ejected toward the left. Wispy white clouds flow around the lava-lit peak, while a star-lit sky shines in the distance. The above image was captured last year as ash fell around the adventurous photographer. Located in Ecuador, Tungurahua has become active roughly every 90 years since for the last 1,300 years. Volcano Tungurahua has started erupting again this year and continues erupting at a lower level even today.

— This is what I call a brave photographer! He was brave enough to put his camera and himself near an erupting volcano! :-)

Wow!

“Cows With Guns” is one of those music video clips, that make you smile and make you think at the same time. The music is very good, the Flash animation – too. Actually, yesterday, while checking the immense file archives on my computer, I found this video by accident (downloaded from where? I don’t remember…). I started the video and started humming the tune of this song almost immediately.

To whom belongs the original of this song, though?… Don’t remember…

PS More info about Cows With Guns (music and animation) – on the final screenshot.
PPS (2007/Sep/17@16:15) I found more info about the singer, who performs “Cows With Guns” – his name is Dana Lyons, he released a whole album under the same name, and it appears, that he’s quite a popular singer:)

Yep, that’s right.

That Mike Davidson has recently switched from MT to WP.

I see more and more bloggers switching over to WordPress.

A few years ago Movable Type didn’t have rivals. Now things are changing.

Movable Type was free. Then it became paid, unless you wanted to use a free (partially limited in its use) copy.

Then WordPress appeared on the horizon, it was open source, it was free and it became one of the fastest developing blog platforms on the market.

Now and then, I see people switching over from Movable Type, from Blogger/Blogspot and from other blog engines to WordPress.

Now Movable Type released a brand new free version (4.0), open source, too… will this be enough to keep it on par with growing WordPress?

To be frank, I doubt it…

It’s interesting to see how things change so fast on the Internet. And for now, I am a (still) happy user of WordPress… actually, I use it since the creation of my blog optimiced in January this year:-)

Finally (but don’t take this seriously, please, this is just a joke, and an excuse for me to master a bit more Adobe Fireworks;-), here’s a graphical representation of what happens to Movable Type currently:

I call it Magic.

Some call it optical illusion, or physics.

For me, it will be Magic forever, and I’ll never forget this moment, when I first saw this “gem” glimmering in the grass…

Rila mountain is a magic place, I love to return there again and again…

[Note: Shot in a forest in Rila mountains, on Oct. 1st, 2006; for full EXIF, check the thumbnails]

I am a lucky owner of a Canon EOS 350D digital camera, plus 3 sets of lenses — 28-105 mm, 90-300 mm, and one 50 mm for macro shots.

But this is just for a few days… I’ve borrowed the Canon from a friend, to experiment, and will have to return it soon; still, I have some time to experiment…

…and today I tried to make a photo of the Moon, when it was rising above the horizon.

To make the long story short, here are my modest results (click the thumbnail for full-size):

I tried a lot of manual settings, before I achieved some acceptable results. Also, the 90-300 lens is not very good at its long end (after the 220-300 mm range images tend to become a bit blurry), and still…

…I am very happy with this shot of mine – the first one in my life, in which you can see actually the Moon, and not a blurry yellow dot instead! ;-)

Maybe I’ll publish some more shots these days…

The 350D is a marvellous machine — pity that I can’t afford myself one like it… But maybe one day, who knows? :-)

PS If you’re curious about the full EXIF info (ISO, exact aperture, exposure, etc.), check the thumbnail!
PPS As if by accident, NASA Image of the Day (APOD) published yesterday a very interesting photo of the moon, too – reason is the full lunar eclipse which happened on the 28th of August and lasted for 90 minutes:)

This is one of my favourite shots from this summer’s going to the Black Sea — I liked the sunset colours a lot, the clouds, the sun rays, shining through the trees, and the seagull, which passed though my field of vision by accident right in the moment when I was pressing the trigger of my Pentax! :-)

(14 August 2007 @ ~19:00 h, St. Constantine and Helena resort, near Varna, Bulgaria; the photo was made from a small pier in the sea facing the shore; for full EXIF, check the thumbnail)

The photo is from the Black Sea (a park in the resort St. Constantine & Helena, near Varna), the original is in full color, but I like this edit in black & white:)

From time to time, I still struggle to publish a word or two in the English version of my blog.

Here’s a photo from my recent vacation on the Black Sea (in the resort St. Constantine & Helena, near Varna city). On it, you can see two waves meeting:)

Note: Except for the brightness & contrast, and a 1-degree horizon-leveling, nothing was changes on the bigger variant of the photo:)