Tis a Blog tis this!

Ok, so I’m a bit late with the first one (blame the day job) so I’ll have to play catch up at some point later.

Honestly I didn’t know which topic to pick first, and then the weekend before last (yes the images have been sitting there for a week or so) I looked up whilst brewing a cuppa in the kitchen and spotted that the kitchen blinds were not simply white slats of plastic, they were…wait for it… white slots of plastic with….drum role please… a fake wood texture. As it happened the sun started peaking from behind the clouds at this point and provide some nice contrasty light through the slats, along with some shaded areas as some gobo [Note: this is a technical term, I'm not making things up for once!] got in the way.

And so the first topic was selected by nature, Texture.

I decided to test my lenses out at the same time so shot a variety of angles with the 24-105mm, 70-200mm, 30mm and 85mm. I was quite surprised at the amount of barrel distortion of the 30mm Sigma, exaggerated by the horizontal lines and by shooting at minimum focus distance. The other surprising thing… two out of the three final shots were from the 70-200mm at full extension, inside, shooting a shaded object. Generally I wouldn’t have picked the lens up for that but I was testing them all, once again that beauty shows it’s worth and reminds me that I should use it more often.

Anyway, less rambling, more pictures. I usually watermark every image but decided to leave it off of the composite one as I found it broke up the flow of the image too much. Enjoy and look forward to the next topic, not sure what it is yet, I’m sure it’ll jump out at me.

Final Composite:

Single Source Images:

{ insert visual of white gloves and mystical waving of wand in to readers mind }

Tada!

The portal page to this blog and, coming later this week/next, the new front end for Project 7.019 is now live. The older version was a bit out of date as Kirstys pictures hadn’t been updated in a while so the link was a tad superfluous. Kirsty now has her own blog dedicated to makeup (Rouge Make Up Artistry) so head over and you can keep up with her work there too.

For those of you that arrive directly to the blog page, bypassing the old entrance, go take a peek, it’s only just over here after all.

Nothing else new at the moment, but if anyone from Vancouver is reading this and they happen to have a used Canon 5D in good condition that they’re selling then let me know!

Until later, hmm, nice cuppa.

As most of you who read this blog know, by day, I’m an IT Systems Admin/Engineer/insert hat-o-the-day here.

One thing I noted when I last went job hunting was that almost all of the advertised jobs requested certifications of some variety – although humorously from an IT perspective some jobs were asking for certs above the level of the work, ie a Level 1 Helpdesk job requiring a Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA) cert, but that’s simply the HR department or non IT hirers not understanding job requirements.

Handily my existing employer understands that experience is more important than pieces of electronic paper with names on, hence why I’m working there now, but I may be job hunting again in the near future depending on the work visa situation here in Canada (we should find out by the end of Jan if we can stay or not).

With that thought in mind back in mid 2010 I decided to plan and implement a rolling 24 month IT personal development plan. All well and good, short term 3 month targets, mid-term 9 months and longer 24 month ones too. The short term plans soon got modified as I discovered that the base level certs that many jobs were asking for, namely the CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+, were going to change slightly from the 1st Jan 2011, from that point on you would have to re-certify every three years through their own CPD program or by sitting the latest exams. So, plans changed, targets for 2010 were then to sit and pass the three aforementioned certifications.

Did it happen?

Yes it did, so I am now officially CompTIA A+, Network+ and Security+ Certified (no men in white coat jokes!) for life. It also means I get to use these fancy graphics (oh er) in any of my personal documents, there’s a 50/50 split in opinions of using logos on CVs/resumes, my current resume has a couple on, might retain them or remove in the next iteration but I think I’ll end up using them in any online version.

Self-study was the game plan so thank you Vancouver Library, Books 24×7. all the folks over at CertForums UK and also Michael over at Boson for accepting me on to their quality testing team – they needed their A+ and Security+ tests tested so having access to them was very helpful.

I’ve got a few IT, blogging, writing and photography targets set for 2011 – but after a hectic few months doing those previous exams I’m going to leave them for a month or two before attacking the next Microsoft exams to complete my MCSA and MCITP upgrade.