Pixels Ate My Homework: June 2010

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

The Lowdown On Photographs And Aspect Ratios

via this Quillcards Blog Article

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Wordpress 3.0 Menus, Thesis Menus, and 'Page Links To'

I found a message on the Wordpress.org Codex page this morning while looking for a page that shows the new features of Wordpress 3.0.
In large red print the message states: "Temporarily, new account creation is suspended while developers work to combat spammers. Please check back later!"
I tried to log in but couldn't on that page, but was able to do so via the forum page and I was able to find the page that lists the features of WordPress 3.0 - it's at http://codex.wordpress.org/Version_3.0
The third in the list of 'highlights' states:
"New custom menu management feature, allows creation of custom menus combining posts, pages, categories, tags, and links for use in theme menus or widgets."
I use the Thesis theme in several of my sites and I notice now that under Appearance > Menu in WP Admin, it says "The current theme does not natively support menus, but you can use the “Custom Menu” widget to add any menus you create here to the theme’s sidebar."
I have recently set up and used WP's new menu system on one of my Wordpress.com sites - at http://photographworks.wordpress.com
I was able to do this (with the aid of a helpful article at http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/06/17/custom-menus-arrive-at-wordpres... ) because Wordpress.com has had the new menu feature for a while.
I was interested in the new WP menu because I was mulling over the advantages of adding categories as a 'child' list in the main navigation menu.
However, I am reluctant to change to WP's menu system in my WP.org blogs until I know how these impact on the features of the menu system built into the Thesis theme.
I took a look at the DIY Themes forum just now and the menu question has been raised a couple of times but nothing more.
When I thought about it a bit more I saw that there was really only one category that I wanted to put up in the navigation menu in http://www.photographworks.com/ and that was a category for which there was only one post.
It is the guide to things to know when considering buying a digital camera, a long article that I wrote just over a year ago and made available as a downloadable pdf.
The Thesis theme allows you to easily add categories to the main navigation menu, but if I had wanted to add several categories then, unless I made all the categories into children of some parent super-category, then each category would appear in the main navigation menu as a separate item rather than in a drop-down.
And for my purpose, having the category item in the menu would not very helpful because clicking it would just take the reader to the one title there is under that category rather than directly to the article.
There is a much neater solution using Thesis and that is to create a page with just a title and, using Mark Jaquith's WP plugin 'Page Links To' [ http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/page-links-to/ ] put the URL of the article to which I want to direct readers. That way, when someone clicks the 'Camera Buying Guide' link in the navigation menu, it takes them straight to the article.

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Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Bees Kept in Urban Areas Escape CCD #bees

via guardian.co.uk

Guardian Article Suggests Bees Kept in Urban Areas Escape CCD - If this is correct then cellphone towers are unlikely to be the cause of CCD, no?

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Monday, June 21, 2010

Birch Trees

Battle of the Atlantic Statistics

Thirteen and a half million tons of Allied Shipping Lost in the Second World War - mostly British in the convoys in the North Atlantic and Britain was almost bankrupted by the Second World War.

All the details of the losses in the Battle of the Atlantic here at usmm.org

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Sarnath – Where Buddha Taught

Full article at The Quillcards Blog

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Inside A Poppy

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Sunday, June 20, 2010

Congressman Steny Hoyer #Bees

Colony Collapse Disorder of Bees
President's Budget Request: $500,000
Beltsville Agricultural Research Center
10300 Baltimore Blvd, Beltsville, MD 20705

The President's budget request seeks to address Colony Collapse Disorder - a major agricultural concern as certain crops can only be pollinated by honey bees. The research to be conducted will focus on the role of pathogens and other stress factors such as pesticides and mitigating their effects. This is a good use of taxpayer funds because it seeks to control or eliminate colony collapse disorder which has the potential to significantly impact our domestic food supply and damage our agricultural economy.

via hoyer.house.gov

From Congressman Hoyer's Biography page:
Congressman Hoyer is recognized as an effective leader by Members on both sides of the aisle. He is the former Chairman of the Helsinki Commission and is widely regarded as a champion on human and civil rights. He is perhaps best known for guiding the landmark Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) to passage in 1990. He also served as the lead House sponsor of historic Federal election reform (the "Help America Vote Act"), which President Bush signed into law on October 29, 2002. In the 111th Congress, Congressman Hoyer’s skill at consensus-building has helped the House pass important legislation to strengthen our economy and bring health coverage to an additional 4 million low-income children through the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. He has also been one of Congress’s leading voices for fiscal responsibility.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland is charged with managing the House Floor as well as scheduling legislation to be considered on the Floor. He plays a key role in helping House Democrats determine their legislative agenda and political strategy and delivering the Democratic message both in Washington and nationally.

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Friday, June 18, 2010

Garry Winogrand Self Portrait

via facweb.cs.depaul.edu

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Thursday, June 17, 2010

Who is the Minister of Mines in Afghanistan

Who is the Minister of Mines in Afghanistan:
Is it Mr. Muhammad Ibrahim Adel as described in the Afghan Embassy web page here:

http://www.afghanistanembassy.no/cat/123.aspx/70720

Or is it Mr H.E. Wahidullah Shahrani - which the news report from Yahoo News and Associated Press suggests at

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/as_afghanistan_mineral_treasures#

But which does not agree with the page for Mr Adel at the Afghan Embassy site, which states that it is being updated...

http://www.afghanistanembassy.no/cat/123.aspx/70706

The Yahoo Page:

By DEB RIECHMANN and AMIR SHAH, Associated Press Writer – 2 hrs 6 mins ago

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan's untapped mineral wealth is worth at least $3 trillion — triple a U.S. estimate, according to the government's top mining official, who is going to Britain next week to attract investors to mine one of the world's largest iron ore deposits in the war-torn nation.

Geologists have known for decades that Afghanistan has vast deposits of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and other prized mineralsminerals, but a U.S. Department of Defense briefing this week put a startling, nearly $1 trillion price tag on the reserves. Minister of Mines Wahidullah Shahrani said Thursday that he's seen geological assessments and industry estimates that the minerals are worth at least $3 trillion.

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Afghan mineral wealth may $3 trillion

KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan's untapped mineral wealth is worth at least $3 trillion — triple a U.S. estimate, according to the government's top mining official, who is going to Britain next week to attract investors to mine one of the world's largest iron ore deposits in the war-torn nation.

via news.yahoo.com

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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Reuters June 15, 2010

Oil Companies Turn on BP at Congressional Hearing- Reuters
Executives from other major oil companies turned on BP Plc and defended their own drilling practices during a U.S. congressional hearing on Tuesday as they sought to stave off new government regulations in the wake of BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

via finance.yahoo.com

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Curtis Botanical Images - The University of Iowa Libraries

HIGHLIGHTS of COLLECTION

via digital.lib.uiowa.edu

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Transcendentalism | Ralph Waldo Emmerson, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau

The formation of the movement was in 1836 with the establishment of the Transcendental Club of Boston, Massachusetts.
"Transcendentalism... maintains that man has ideas, that come not through the five senses, or the powers of reasoning, but are either the result of direct revelation from God, his immediate inspiration, or his immanent presence in the spiritual world," and "it asserts that man has something besides the body of flesh, a spiritual body, with senses to perceive what is true, and right and beautiful, and a natural love for these, as the body for its food."

... who opposed Unitarianism because it was based on the sensationalism of John Locke which "insisted that only that knowledge which could be demonstrated to the senses was valid." Emerson claimed this amounted to "'a cold intellectualism' that seemed to destroy the validity of man's conscience."

via themystica.com

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The Chautauqua Movement

via univie.ac.at

Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: I would like to use the time to talk in some depth about things that seem important. What is in mind is a sort of Chautauqua — that´s the only name that I can think of for it — like the traveling tent-show Chautauquas that used to move across America, […] an old-time series of popular talks intended to edify and entertain, improve the mind and bring culture and enlightenment to the ears and thoughts of the hearer. ( Pirsig, p.17)

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Tuesday, June 8, 2010

BP bankruptcy ahead? Rivals 'licking their chops'

Some have wondered whether BP can financially survive the disaster in the Gulf. Sure, the oil giant is a diverse, international money-making machine, but the Guardian reported Monday that BP had already spent $1.25 billion seven weeks into the oil spill, with no clear end in sight. The company will be dealing with an avalanche of lawsuits for years (a New Orleans attorney told me she expects that some local law school grads will spend the bulk of their careers working on spill-related cases) and the company's stock recently nose-dived. In spite of all this, BP CEO Tony Hayward has repeatedly insisted that his company will see the disaster through until the Gulf Coast is "made whole" again.

But New York Times financial reporter >Andrew Ross Sorkin notes that many industry watchers doubt BP can survive. Rivals Exxon and Shell are already circling like buzzards in anticipation that the company may stagger into oblivion. Or, as Sorkin puts it....

via Brett Michael Dykes - national affairs writer for Yahoo! News. READ THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE HERE: news.yahoo.com

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Sunday, June 6, 2010

Many Gulf federal judges have oil links - Associated Press

By CURT ANDERSON, AP Legal Affairs Writer Curt Anderson, Ap Legal Affairs Writer – Sun Jun 6, 2:03 pm ET
MIAMI – More than half of the federal judges in districts where the bulk of Gulf oil spill-related lawsuits are pending have financial connections to the oil and gas industry, complicating the task of finding judges without conflicts to hear the cases, an Associated Press analysis of judicial financial disclosure reports shows.
Thirty-seven of the 64 active or senior judges in key Gulf Coast districts in Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi and Florida have links to oil, gas and related energy industries, including some who own stocks or bonds in BP PLC, Halliburton or Transocean — and others who regularly...

Best Focal Lengths For Portrait Lenses — Photograph Works

What lens should I use for taking a portrait photograph of someone’s face? You will see this question asked time and time again by aspiring photographers. The reason it is asked is that they often don’t have long enough lenses and are disappointed when they use short focal length lenses. Or they can’t believe it is a good idea to step back and use a long focal length lens.

I took this photograph of a young Asian woman with a 105mm lens on a DX camera. That is equivalent to a lens with a focal length of 157.5mm in full frame. That is not a short focal length lens.