I started my A level courses just over 2 weeks ago, and so far I am not finding them to hard. That is not to say I am getting a lot of free time but in fact the complete opposite, partly due to the fact I have joined the school Uganda appeal. We have a link school in uganda with which we do huge amounts of fundraising for, in over a year we can raise about £15,000; which last year bought them a girls dormitory.

For my A-levels I am taking Maths, Physics, Economics and DT, they all sort of point to engineering but that is not really something I want to do, but we will see. People often think that I would have a lot of work with those subject, but I find I don’t as I am never really set essays which makes the work easier to deal with.

My birthday is in just a few days and I thought I would share with you what I want for my Birthday.

• Eye TV DTT
• Flickr Pro Account
• XMI X-mini II Mini Speaker
• Nikon D90
• Windows 7 (when released)

But the most exciting thing to happen this week is the announcements that in the UK the iPhone will be available on Orange and Vodafone as well as O2. So hopefully, depending on pricing I will be able to get an iPhone on Vodafone. I think that with 3 vendors selling it we might see some aggressive pricing and that is better for us.

In my opinion when installing a new OS the only way to go is to clean install. This requires a wipe of the entire hard drive which is effort, but can save you countless GB’s of wasted space full of temporary system files that have built up. With this in mind you add the 7GB’s that Snow Leopard promises to save you, I managed to save 20GB’s of space!

Snow Leopard contains no headline new features, but instead offers refinements to existing features and some of these refinements are as small as animation in the spaces navigator; it now slides along with you as you move from space to space (shown right) an other example is the dark menus in the dock, this are just small Ui changes but make Snow Leopard just that bit nicer to use.

Other updates have been more widely publicised such as the new Exposé which not only works from the dock but puts the windows into a grid pattern to help organisation. The addition of a signal strength indicator for all the wifi hotspots around you has also been popularly discussed. One of my favourite new features is the upgraded services menu which is now contextual. I feel services has always been undervalued but with its new design it really makes it much easier for the user.

On the matter of compatibility the only things that I seem to have had any difficultly with are Dropbox and 1Password, everything els seems to be working fine. Everything I use on a day to day basis works fine, even CS3. http://snowleopard.wikidot.com offers a list of all the compatible software they have tested in Snow Leopard, so you can check anything you want. One other incompatibility thing I have come across is when I try to install the FLIQLO screensaver I get a popup saying it can’t be installed. Other software that seems to work fine but has a few quirks are things like Growl and other 32bit preferences which requires Preferences to restart in a 32bit mode before you can access it.

In my opinion Snow Leopard is stable enough and well worth the upgrade. Even from an end user point of view the speed, space and general fresh feel you get from the new OS is worth the £25.

For the past two weeks I have been on holiday. We spent the first week in Sri Lanka and the second on an island in the Maldives called Ohuveli. During the first week we toured Sri Lanka visiting tea factories, botanical gardens and did even some white water rafting. Then we flew on to Male the capital of the Maldives, from there we took a 45 minute boat ride, but due to the fact we smashed into a corral reef at 1 in the morning and destroyed the engines of the boat it took us an extra hour. Finally we reached the island where we received special treatment for the mishap.

During my time away I had the perfect opportunity to test the ruggedness of the Canon PowerShot D10 we purchased for the trip, but most importantly I was able to really test its underwater feature set because of the wide variety of water based activities there are in the Maldives. In the Maldives it is hard to do anything that does not included getting wet due to the simple fact you are on an island surrounded by water.

On Holiday we took 6 Cameras but 3 of the cameras acted as our primary cameras. My Nikon D50 was one of the most used, then there was the Canon PowerShot D10 which we used mostly in the Maldives for all sorts of water based activities and finally there was my step mums which was used as the basic point and shoot. We could have used the Canon D10 as a point and shoot but it is a bit bulky to go in a pocket. After importing all the cameras in to Aperture I have nearly 600 photos. I created a set of smart albums to divide the photos by day and by which camera they were taken with, this helps me work when and by who they were taken making organization much easier.

I arrived back at 11 o’clock in the evening of the 26th to discover that Snow Leopard has been given a release date of the 28th. Being a giant Apple fan boy I instantly went to Apple.com and bought Snow Leopard without even hesitating (which is odd as I am not very impulsive). I am preparing for Snow Leopard by clearing my spear hard drive so I can do a back up with SuperDuper. I am planning on doing an erase and install to help clear out my machine, but it will require a lot of work and time in order to get back to a fully function computer.

Every Tuesday I try to publish one of my photo that you could uses a desktop background. The images are large enough to be used on a 30″ display. Enjoy the images and I would be grateful for any feedback.

Just click here to Download it

See the Archives Here

Flickr is a popular photo sharing site that anyone who has an interest in photography should be on. It is one of Yahoo’s few successful ventures and an extremely valuable resource for photographers. It can be used as an online gallery so prospective clients can view your work or it can be used as a medium to get critiques. I have been using it for years and thought it would be worth sharing some tips I have learnt while using it.

Alway title your work

When people are looking at your Flickr page and an image is called DCS009 it tells them that you don’t take care in the work you do. A title should always be unique and capture what the image is portraying. Try to avoid duplicate names and be as unique and imaginative as you can, often a title can help people understand what you were trying to do.

Always add a description

A title can tell you what you were trying to do but a description is a place to say how you did it and to ask if it worked. Adding a description makes your work personal and makes it more interesting for the viewer. Tell them the story behind the picture how, where and why you took it.

Never upload more than 5 at a time

Uploading 50 images of the same thing can be boring and repetative for a viewer. The more images the less likely someone is going to see your best ones. People are not going to spend 20 minutes looking though all 50 images you just uploaded. The number 5 comes from the original Flickr users home page were you saw 5 of your contacts most recent uploads. The current page shows 10 but in my opinion that is just to many. By spacing out uploads it gives people time to look at each individual image and comment, rather than being rush to see all 50 and not commenting on any.

Never upload too many of the same in a row

If your Flickr page is covered in images that from a distance look similar you are doing it wrong! There is only so much a person can say about 5 images of the exact same thing. If you have 5 good images of a similar thing spread them out by putting images of a different subject in between.

Sort them out

The worst thing when looking at someone’s Flickr page is discovering that they have not bothered to organise there images in to any kind of sets. If someone wants to see all your HDR’s put them into a set. Rather than spending hours scrolling through all your photos they can see what they are looking for in just a view clicks.

Be selective

Spend time choosing the images you want to put up. Put only your best up, no one wants to have to wade through thousands of disappointing shots to find a few goodens.

Be social

Flickr is a social networking site, so network! Add your photos to groups, find contacts you like and comment. By being social your viewing counts will grow and you never know you might learn something about photography you never knew before by looking at others work.

Go Pro

I am by no means a great photographer but I know what I like in an image. One of the best things that happened for my photography was to receive the gift of a Flickr Pro account (thanks to Chris Leigh). I would recommend to anyone who has tried out Flickr and loves it to get a pro account.