Maybe because I'm not a coder to begin with, it never ceases to amaze me how much I can accomplish with just a few lines of PHP. Girasole PHP script is a case in point. It's so short and simple that it hardly deserves to be called an application. Yet it fulfills a huge need I've had for quite a while. It may have something to do with age, but the older I get, the more I appreciate the joy of reliving memories through my photos. I'm not keen on uploading my entire library to Google Photos or a similar service to make use of their "photos from the past" functionality. Because 1) pushing several terabytes of data would take forever and a day, 2) would be prohibitively expensive, and 3) I'm not enamored with the idea of entrusting my most private data to a third party, no matter how good their privacy protection track record is.
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Three years ago to the day, I wrote about two collared doves, who decided to build a nest right above our kitchen window. I'll be forever thankful to them for brightening our days during the worst pandemic days.
But the story didn't end there. In 2020, they didn't manage to finish the nest, so they returned in 2021. They didn't finish the nest then either. So in 2022, they were back. Alas, a storm took down their unfinished work. It's 2023, and guess who is back?
We're now lovingly referring to them as "The Engineers" and their nest as "Berlin Airport".
Of all the photography-related paraphernalia I bought in recent times, Musou black KIWAMI fabric proved to be the most useful one. Musou what? Well, ever since I learned about vantablack, I've been mildly obsessed with the idea of absolute black. The only problem with vantablack is that you can't have it. But there is a commercially available product similar to vantablack called Musou Black developed and sold in Japan. I tracked down an EU distributor and splurged for an A4 sheet.
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Hald CLUT files offer a quick and easy way to apply effects to photos, and there are plenty of desktop applications that can handle the task. But if you want to use your favorite Hald CLUT files on an Android device, you'll quickly discover that there are not that many apps (if any at all) that allow you to do that. No problem: instead of relying on a third-party proprietary app, you can roll out your own solution using Termux.
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Why spend money on an expensive external HDMI monitor for your camera when an Android device together with the right mix of cables and adapters can do the trick? Of course, if you are doing professional work that requires dedicated tools, then a proper external monitor justifies the expense. For the rest of us mere mortals, though, a slightly less elegant but inexpensive solution would do the job just fine.
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