Ians Ramblings

I was out this weekend taking photos at a deer park, Calke Abbey in Derbyshire and discovered a strange effect on my images.

Firstly, to explain Bokeh. Bokeh is the quality of the unfocused part of the image and it should be soft and unobtrusive it certainly should not draw the eye from the focused subject.

I noticed when using my 70-300mm ED Nikonr lens I got some quite horrible stripes appearing in the bokeh, here’s an example.

It’s easier to see the effect when zoomed in closer in the following example

Bizarrely the fix for this problem I discovered after Googling around the subject was to remove the UV filter from the lens.  This issue also seems to affect the newer VR version of the same lens, so if you have either of these Nikon lenses try shooting without a UV filter, and use a lens hood for protection instead.

Had a great time over at the BBC Derby Children in need charity motorbike run at the weekend. There must have been around 500 bikes in total accompanied by the Blues Brothers car which was blasting out music.

We rode from CMC in Clay Cross over to Derby via some nice winding country roads, unfortunately a few too many traffic lights.

Unfortunately I heard the sad news about Marco Simoncelli, someone came over and told me which was so shocking I didn’t really concentrate properly after that. But all in all it was a great event and I will definitely be doing it next year.

If you, like me have fiddled with your MyBookLive to make it do alot more than it was designed to including updating the version of PHP, be aware if it throws a load of “cannot modify header” errors when launching the UI you just need to do the following: -

Edit your php.ini and ensure that error reporting goes to the apache error log not to the end user. The UI will now come up, the errors themselves are caused by the cake framework calling deprecated methods in the new version of PHP, clearly the better fix would be to upgrade the cake framework on the box but who knows what issues that could cause.

Just a little note for anyone who is getting the error message “The following packages cannot be authenticated” when trying to install MCrypt for PHP on Debian

First install the debian-archive-keyring, then install the php mcrypt package then graceful apache2 and all should be fine, as follows: -

apt-get debian-archive-keyring
apt-get update
apt-get install php5-mcrypt
/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Got tasked with getting the Informix DBI module working for a webserver today and found it rather unpleasant, so I thought I would share the method I used to get it working.

####### added the following to /usr/informix/etc/sqlhosts
devsportdb5     onsoctcp        hostnameofserver    ids_tcp

####### ontlitcp (On Solaris)

####### Set the following environment variables

DBD_INFORMIX_USERNAME=informixuser
DBD_INFORMIX_PASSWORD=password
DBD_INFORMIX_DATABASE=databasename
INFORMIXDIR=/usr/informix/
INFORMIXSERVER=devsportdb5
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/informix/lib/:/usr/informix/lib/esql/
PATH=/usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/informix/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/root/bin:$INFORMIXDIR/bin:

export DBD_INFORMIX_USERNAME
export DBD_INFORMIX_PASSWORD
export DBD_INFORMIX_DATABASE
export INFORMIXDIR
export INFORMIXSERVER

### added the following to /etc/services
ids_tcp         1526/tcp                        # informix service

### Force install
perl -MCPAN -e "CPAN::Shell->force(qw(install Bundle::DBD::Informix));

I found these far more helpful than the CPAN page

http://www-01.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=swg21252384
http://www.webmasterkb.com/Uwe/Forum.aspx/perl-dbi/1568/DBD-Informix-Make-test-Problem
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/idshelp/v10/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.sqlr.doc/sqlrmst228.htm

Had a great time over at Belton House near Grantham today trying out the manual features on my new camera. It’s the most friendly National Trust property I have ever been to and the rest have been friendly so certainly saying something.

Really lovely stately home, gorgeous formal gardens and capability brown style complete with woods and deer park.

Stag in the woods

Once I had sifted through my images I tried out a little plugin for Photoshop called ReDynaMix which allowed me to HDR some of my images, so I thought I would share one example.

HDR Belton House

Had a brilliant time camping this weekend over at Barn Farm in Birchover in the Peak District. Also the roads to get there are just spectacular, well worth a visit.

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