efix:photography - News. Thoughts. Pictures. » Off-topic

Off-topic: Goodbye, SGU!

efix — Wed, 11 May 2011 06:07:57 +0000

Thanks, Brad Wright & co., for giving us this wonderful, serene, melancholic, sad, dignified, thought-provoking finale to SGU. You allowed the series to go off screen in dignity, and you gave your fans one last epic episode that works both as an end to the series as well as a bridge to a possible continuation — even though that may never come. You’ve done a truly great job here! As a fan of Stargate and SGU in particular, I say goodbye, and thanks for all the fish

Are those EU bureaucrats in their right mind?

efix — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 08:44:12 +0000

EDIT: This of course was an April fool’s pun as well. Although, sadly, quite a realistic scenario …

After recently outlawing incandescent light bulbs for their high energy consumption, the EU has now decided to outlaw analog film emulsions as well as film development chemicals — reports Systemkamera Blog.

The reason for this decision are — again — environmental concerns. (Nobody does seem to be concerned about Plutonium in the EU, do they?) Black-and-white emulsions will be taken off the market first, as they contain high amounts of silver halides. Next will be colour emulsion, and finally [...]

Breaking news: Leica developing vario lens for X2!

efix — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:35:19 +0000

EDIT: April fool! Which of course you knew right away, didn’t you?

German photography e-zine photoscala.de reports that Leica Solms are working on a technology to use a lens’ internal focusing mechanism to alter the lens’ focal length. This is being achieved by reprogramming the lens in a way that the lens elements used for focusing can be moved seperately, to achieve a mild change in focal length as well. The current prospect is to turn the X1′s 24mm f/2.8 Elmarit into a 22-50mm zoom lens.

Read the full article over at photoscala.de (with [...]

Oh, bugger! Guess what happened …

efix — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 07:04:28 +0000

EDIT: This was of course my — admittedly slightly macabre — april fools joke for this year! And I sincerely apologize to all those who were actually worried about me — I promise to make up something more harmless next year

I’m writing this from the hospital, lying in a comfy hospital bed, glad that I haven’t been killed yesterday. But, what has been killed is my Leica M8 … oh, and our car. Well, here’s the story.

Yesterday, I decided to accompany my wife and son to the gym, where they go every thursday afternoon to meet [...]

Off-topic: recommended lightbox plugin for WP

efix — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:38:56 +0000

I’ve had my share of experiences with lightbox plugins for WordPress.

I started with Lightbox Plus, which worked nicely until I switched from version 2.0 to a newer version, which would cause an error message and keep my WP installation from running properly. I’ve just re-checked the latest version, it still doesn’t work.

Today, I noticed that the old version (2.0) of Lightbox Plus doesn’t seem to work any longer with the latest WordPress 3.1 (to which I just updated). I don’t know why, I’m not an expert on this, but it did work with [...]

Off-topic: New site title

efix — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:25:16 +0000

In accordance with my other and earlier web presences, I entitled this website “efix:photography”, featuring a nickname that was given to me years ago. I still cherish it, but as this site is no longer just about me, but mostly about what developments in the photographic world I deem interesting and worthwhile reporting on, I decided to subtitle this website, to make its purpose more clear. The new title is

efix:photography – News. Thoughts. Pictures.

And the subtitle is

News from the photographic world. Thoughts on photographic topics. Pictures from my world.

At this occasion [...]

Off-topic: Good news – ozone layer recovering

efix — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 12:54:18 +0000

According to a report on Spiegel ONLINE, scientists have now proved that not only has the ozone layer been recovering in the northern hemisphere, but also that its recovery is due to the banning of CFC and other substances in the late 1980′s. They also predict that the ozone layer will have fully recoverd by the end of the century.

Here’s an online translation of the German article.

Off-topic: Lightbox Plus 2.1 made my WP crash

efix — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 15:57:51 +0000

WARNING! The latest version 2.1 of Lightbox Plus, the popular WordPress image viewing plugin, does not work satisfactorily with WordPress 3.0!

After just updating from v1.6.something to v2.1, I could neither access my website nor the WordPress admin area. I always got an error message relating to a certain PHP file in the plugin’s installation folder. So I manually migrated back to v2.0 (which has no reported failures according to the plugin’s website), now everything runs as it should again.

Here’s the plugin’s website: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/lightbox-plus/

Off-topic: Emil’s first steps free-hand

efix — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:54:47 +0000

This morning, Emil made his first few steps free-hand! So far he always had to hold fast to something, be it furniture or a person. This morning, it seems he simply forgot to do so.

(Proud dads have to tell everyone, don’t they )

Off-topic: Deus Ex 3: Coming Soon (That’s not soon enough!)

efix — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 09:08:39 +0000

After the domain deusex3.com had been online for several years now, showing only a video that didn’t seem to have to do anything with the earlier games, there finally seems to be some process going on. The website now features an all-new trailer which shows how the final game might actually look like, as well as several links, one of which leads to the Eidos Montréal Twitter feed.

The website’s title says “Deux Ex: Coming Soon”. I wonder how soon “soon” is, as everyone’s been waiting for the game for years – even longer than we’ve been [...]