PAD Final Logo

D&D Studios completed the logo, and what to say, I'm really satisfied with it.
Here the two versions:

Sony Alpha 100 panoramas

Since I didn't have free time lately, I could not play too much with my new camera. I wanted to understand how easy it could be to create a panorama from over 20 pictures without spending too much time on it.

What I did was to mount the 75-300mm on the Sony Alpha, putting it in a backpack with a tripod and the go on the top of an hill.

After mounting the camera on the tripod, I leveled it, and then I've taken two set of pictures, the first zooming at 75mm (full back), the second at 300mm (full forward).
The first set consisted in 23 pictures saved at 10 mega pixel with maximum quality, while the second in 44 pictures. I should have taken more pictures, but sadly enough I had all the memory cards almost full, and so I couldn't do it.

For the stitching I've used Hugin, a free GUI interface to Panorama Tools. Through these open source projects, I was able to create two huge images, the first was 19104x1791 pixels, while the second 19267x1829. The computed images are not at the maximum possible resolution because Hugin said that 2 Gigabyte of RAM was not enough.

Since it's not very practical to show such images on a browser, I had to used another tool, called Zoomify, that even if it's not an open source project, was at least available in demo mode:

Here there the results:

http://www.prezzibenzina.it/zoomify/maser_20070423_75mm.html (full size link)

http://www.prezzibenzina.it/zoomify/maser_20070423_300mm.html (full size link)

What did I learn from this experience? Quite a lot actually:

• In the computed images, it's still possible to identify how the pictures where stitched together, and this is because, even if Hugin/Panorama Tools are quite good in matching image tonality and exposure, next time I will use the AE Lock function on the camera, so that each set of picture is taken with the same aperture and exposition (is white balancing locked too?)
• 2 Gigabyte of RAM are not enough when it comes to generate images bigger than the ones displayed here, but maybe tweaking some parameters will lead to minor memory usage
  
• Shooting trees and grass without a polarizing filter leads to poor image quality, this is why I've already ordered a cheap 55mm circ-polarizing filter on eBay
• I will never go out for a shooting trip with full memory cards again,
  I will never go out for a shooting trip with full memory cards again,
  I will never go out for a shooting trip with full memory cards again....

Impossible Guitar

When I saw this guitar outside Niagara Hard-Rock Cafè I desidered to use it in a funny artwork.

Here the result:

New (simple?) project: Pro Loco Maser

I always say that I'm too busy to accept new projects, and this is because I try to use my free time for developing project that may either money rewarding or at least useful for the community.

Since in the past I realized a manifestation website called www.mostradellaciliegia.it today I accepted to realized a new website for the non-profit organization "Pro Loco Maser", so that in the future they could manage all of their local manifestations.

So few minutes ago I registered the domain www.prolocomaser.it domain for 42€ (tax included) throught the we.register.it, not because I think their are the best, but just because I found it easier to manage all of my Italian domains from a single place. In micro-economics they called it vendor lock-in and it is something you (as a client) should always avoid. Oh well, at least I am able to recognize it, I really don't have enough time to look for better service providers.

Few anticipations: I'll probably use Joomla as CMS, and the contents will be similar to www.prolocoalano.it (another no-profit organization nearby).

Cherry manifestation

Do you like cherries? If so, you may be interested in the 17th "Mostra della ciliegia" (Cherry show) held on Sunday May 27th 2007 at Maser (TV) Italy. For more information (in Italian) you may visit the event website: www.mostradellaciliegia.it.

PAD Logo second draft

Here the second draft from D&D Studios, with a better looking pizza and the website url.

Üzemanyagárak

Looking at the most used keywords for accessing Prezzi Benzina (Italian for gas prices), I found a strange word: Üzemanyagárak.
Searching that word on Google I found out that there are a lot of Hungarian web sites with links like this: Üzemanyagárak. The reason of course is very simple, it seems to be the Hungarian translation for fuel, but still I don't understand why so many Hungarian people are interested in Italian gas prices.
Are there so many Hungarian people in Italy? Why didn't I find any other foreign keyword?

PAD Logo draft

As it has been suggested by Adam Khoo in the book I am still reading, I used the outsourcing service provided by Elance. Among many bidders I chose D&D Studios, and here there are their first two drafts.
I was so impressed that I've already used the first one to make a work in progress page.

Awesome start

My new project, "Pizza a Domicilio" is running faster than I expected.
When I chose the domain name I expected a good positioning on Google result pages, but reaching in about a week the seventh position with the key-phrase "pizza a domicilio" was completely unexpected.
The key-phrase "pizza domicilio" is well positioned too, since it's at the eleventh position. Too bad that there are only ten result per page, so this implies being on page two, but still it's much more than expected.