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Photo Print Services – Don’t Go For Cheap

Mario — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 20:04:11 +0000

It’s an adventure to find the right print service. At least over here in the Netherlands everything is about pricing first, quality second.

This is not just true for print services by the way, this also counts for restaurants. If you ask somebody to recommend a restaurant it’s most likely that they name one where you get much food for little money. Quality second.

OK, you got the point. Now let’s have it about print services:

The big quality problem Webprint.nl creates with its own philosophy of being the cheapest lays in the fact that too many processes are fully automated. While there is nothing wrong with automating processes, there is not enough human control. They print every image with the same settings.

But you really want somebody in place who can see if an image comes to dark or with to flat colors out of the printer. I don’t know about you but if this has an extra price tag on it, it’s OK for me.

As I promised in the video here are the links to the original images shown in the video. Click here for the lion and here for Daisy. Clicking on this images will increase them, so you can have an even closer look.

Please leave your comment below in the comment section and if you like please share this on Facebook, Google+, Twitter a.s.o. This helps this blog tremendously. Thank you!

Starting With Strobe Photography Without Breaking The Bank

Mario — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:14:31 +0000

If you want to get your toes wet with studio strobes you most likely don’t want to break your bank account. This is especially true if you are on a budget. But this shouldn’t withhold you from getting started either.

You can start your studio strobe adventure with gear around the $100,- per strobe and this will be enough for now. I always suggest to get to the edge with the gear you have before you upgrade and go to the next level. At least this is my upgrade strategy.

A Solution For The Firefox Not Responding Issue

Mario — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:21:41 +0000

No, this blog isn’t suddenly about browsers and this kind of stuff but this post is much less off topic than you might think in the first place. There is one issue with Firefox that annoyed the crap out of me lately.

It’s not the one that Firefox doesn’t start because it’s already (invisible) active in the background. No, as with every application you can easily solve this by shutting down the task in the task manager.

The most annoying issue is that Firefox will freeze ten or twenty times a day stating that it’s not responding. Sometimes it will come back to life again sometimes it will not before my patience has vanished.

So it was time for a solution.

Alas, there was not a real solution on-line I could find that wouldn’t have some bad side effects I didn’t want to cope with. However, after fiddling around a little with some of them I found this very simple one described in the video above and I really hope that it will work for you as well.

American Censorship Day

Mario — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 23:01:00 +0000

As entertainment industry already has the power to ban content that infringes their copyrights. Most of us don’t have a problem with that. At least I don’t.

But now they are trying to go too far. The question is: will we let them do this?

PROTECT IP / SOPA Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

The Naked Amazon Truth – This Was Sold In September 2011

Mario — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 22:01:00 +0000

After the last post on this topic I got a very adorable e-mail from a visitor who really was concerned about my earnings. This is why I want to underline that this whole Amazon thing isn’t to demonstrate how little money this blog is generating.

The truth is, and I hope this will take away the concerns of my valued audience, this blog keeps my dog eating and some extra. For example: this year the hosting is paid by a big British telecom provider. So please don’t worry about me.

Anyway, you can find the reason for this Amazon series by clicking here.

OK, let’s go to the September edition (I know, it’s October and I was to lame to write this post earlier).

The first September sale that brought in the massive amount of $0,71 in commissions was Directing the Story: Professional Storytelling and Storyboarding Techniques for Live Action and Animation.

The second, content related sale was the Dummies-book below, what made $0,40 in commissions and let’s Daisy the dog smile as I now can treat her on pig’s ear.

Drawing courses are very popular under my audience. Why isn’t this surprising me? The two books below together generated a commission of $ 1,18

Last but not least we come to this book on Story Engineering what made me rich over night with a commission of $ 0,32.

If you wonder if I want to continue this series next year, the answer is NO. In the beginning of this year I promised to keep running and I do what I promise. Just as easy as that.

On the other hand I like to showcase you the difference between the reality of a mid-size blog and the reality some self proclaimed Guru’s try to make you believe. It’s not my thing to create a blog on money making on-line or this kind of stuff.

Have a great day and see you soon.

The Naked Amazon Truth – This Was Sold In August 2011

Mario — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 15:57:19 +0000

You probably thought this series had died a sudden death and wondered what was sold in June and July. The answer is pretty simple: nothing!

If you wonder what this is all about, you can read the back story of the naked Amazon truth by clicking here.

OK, ladies and gents, let’s get started.

Here is what was sold in August via Amazon:

It has nothing to do with the content on this black whatsoever, but I’m glad there is somebody out there getting his or here college degree because of the purchase of this calculator.

This supports the blog with $2,58 and the Amazon check will probably arrive a few years earlier than expected. Thank you very much for this.

Though this blog isn’t about gaming either, I guess we can agree on the fact that there are some overlapping interests here. The second and last Amazon sale was the Playstation game below what added $1,16 to the coffee corner.

This post came a little late as September is coming to its end in a few days, but the good news is that there is something to report about it. So if you are curious on the naked truth in Amazon sales of September keep an eye on this series.

Mother And Child

Mario — Sun, 04 Sep 2011 15:34:33 +0000

Before the very eye of the amazed public a gorilla baby was born in our local zoo. Of course Murphy’s Law was at work and at that moment my friend Pedro and I were on the other end of the park.

When we tried to get to the gorilla habitat we discovered that suddenly an event had started and the way to most parts of the zoo were closed due to a marathon.

Sounds crazy? Yes, it is crazy. Luckily we have our membership cards, otherwise I would have demanded that they give me my bleeping money back.

But enough rant. Yesterday we went out determined to get a peek at the baby.

It was a very hot and sunny day, so mother and child were hiding in the shadow like most of the animals. For the large distance I needed a large shutter speed, even though I used my monopod. This is the reason that I decided for a unusual high ISO for this circumstances.

As the animals were too far away I decided to crop and make the image work in black and white. Not the best shot but my only chance to take one of a one week old gorilla baby as next weekend it would be 2 weeks old, duh.

Have a nice day ahead and keep your eyes open for some drawing stuff later today.

Think Tank Sling-O-Matic 30 Unboxing And Review

Mario — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:15:25 +0000

I never thought that I would give that much attention to a camera bag rather than just walk into the next store, see if it probably fits my camera with some other stuff and then just buy it.

After shooting a little more intensive lately, and seeing my gear grow, I learned that I have to give this a more serious thought.

There are a couple of demands I had on a new camera bag as you can see in the list below this video.

I wanted a bag that fits my camera with the 70-200 2.8 mounted and would prefer the lens hood in position so that I can take it out and shoot without a hassle.
It had to be a sling back that I could easily wear over my left or right shoulder. Switching from one side to the other shouldn’t be a hassle as well.
It should be as small as possible yet firm. I tried more thick and fluffy sling backs and even though they were convenient, they just were too large.
The camera should always be on top when I sling it to my front, no matter if I would wear the bag over my left or right shoulder.
Thinking on my visits to my Brooklyn sister I wanted to have one bag that can take all the stuff I normally took in little bags, stuffed in one larger. Plus the laptop bag of course.
For obvious reasons it shouldn’t wear the name of one of the large camera brands on it.

The Think Tank Sling-O-Matic 30 fulfilled all this needs and more as you can see in my video. I really thought a while about purchasing it for a while as I wasn’t a friend of spending that amount of money for a camera/laptop bag but I already see that this bag will be a very good companion for a long time.

Does This Real-Life Photoshop Eye Roller From Loreal Men Expert Really Work?

Mario — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 17:42:12 +0000

Today I’m as off topic as off topic can be. For the first time in my entire life I decided to test a cosmetic product.

While I’m still waiting for my Al Pacino charisma to appear I decided to try out one of these Men Expert products to help me fight the bag and rings under my eyes.

I see this kind of stuff as a real-life Photoshop thing. Of course this stick is much more expensive over here in the Netherlands as in the rest of the world and I’m still not sure if it is worth more than $20 compared to something around $6 on the other side of the Atlantic ocean. In the video I said $13 bucks but it’s much cheaper on Amazon.

Since I was a child I always saw this stuff for women and was always wondering why the use it. In the end I never saw a single woman staying looking younger. And if these wrinkle stuff that should prevent wrinkles should work, how could you probably tell as you don’t know how it would look like without ever using it.

Anyway, I tried this eye roller thing and the decision is on you if it really makes the bag and dark circle under the eyes less prominent.

Have a great day ahead!

Silent (English Translation Of ‘Still’ By Jupiter Jones)

Mario — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:59:34 +0000

If you expect a tutorial or something more related with my usual articles please skip this post and come back one of these days.

It took me one week to decide whether or not to write and publish this post. The main reason for this is that I didn’t know what to write. I felt that I was supposed to explain something out of my private life. Finally I understood that I don’t have to explain anything.

The reason for sharing this is that I was very moved when an ex-girlfriend from 23 years ago sent me this song by the German band Jupiter Jones.

I did my best to translate the text for you into English (below) and think I did a pretty good job.

Even now I hesitate to push the publish button but I think I do it anyway.

I had to embed the video above as the version on Youtube has embedding disabled. If this one goes down for any reason just click her for the Youtube-version.

Gosh, I think she never really hated me.

Silent (Still by Jupiter Jones)

So silent that everyone of us knew
this is forever, forever and a lifetime

And it was so silent that everyone of us felt
that there is no word that ever could
describe this feeling

So silent that all the clocks were silenced
Yes, the time stopped going on

So silent and lost you went away
So silent and lost you went away

I’ve heard so much yet I never understand
This is the reason that I can’t sleep at night

Even if I write a thousand songs about missing
Doesn’t mean that I understand why this feeling
stays forever

So loud, the hours after the impact
when it counted to notice everything and understand

And it was so loud that everything we thought
just brought us emptiness

It was so loud and lost here
When silence lived with us instead of you

I’ve heard so much yet I never understand
This is the reason that I can’t sleep at night

Even if I write a thousand songs about missing
Doesn’t mean that I understand why this feeling
stays forever

So silent
Although I miss you every day
And wherever you are at the moment
You show me that silence now has become your friend

I’ve heard so much yet I never understand
This is the reason that I can’t sleep at night

Even if I write a thousand songs about missing
Doesn’t mean that I understand
Doesn’t mean that I understand

I’ve heard so much yet I never understand
This is the reason that I can’t sleep at night

Even if I write a thousand songs about missing
Doesn’t mean that I understand why this feeling
stays forever

Mario Live! » Uncategorized

Photo Print Services – Don’t Go For Cheap

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